Knives and lust were mixed up together in Mike Leonidas' warped sin-mind. Lust and knives ruled his twisted life; they had brought him where he was-unquestioned lust lord of George Morris Vocational High School, where the faculty cowered at his command and the last innocent girl they sent down to teach the animal student body had been found with her clothes cut off and stark terror burning in her eyes. Love and pain were never far apart in Mike's plans-love for Joanie, the seventeen-year-old brunette who had been his steady until one day she found she'd have to share him with Marge, the fifteen-year-old blonde newcomer-share him publicly, under the agonizing lash of a whip that made her his chattel, that made her submit to Marge's enforced twisted hungers that showed her, suddenly, the alleys of sin that women twice her age would never know. It meant pain for Lisa, the virgin whose punishment for being the wrong boy's sister was sobbing agony at the hands of Mike's lust-driven hoods. Love and pain ... sick, evil love for his own power ... monstrous pain for those who dared to cross him ... these were the twin guide markers that led him to damnation!
CHAPTER ONE
TV Tike Leonidas said to the girl, "Take your clothes off and let's see what you've got, sister."
The girl didn't look offended. The girl didn't hesitate. Mike Leonidas wanted her to take her clothes off, and that was exactly what she was going to do. Nobody argued with Mike Leonidas. Mike was the absolute boss of George Morris Vocational High School, the czar, the top banana, the number one man. That issue hadn't been in doubt for a long time, now. Mike Leonidas had been running things in GMVHS ever since the first half of his sophomore year, and that was two years ago.
The girl wasn't his regular girl. His regular girl was a brunette called Joanie, and this one was a blonde called Marge. Mike had seen her around the school all term, but this was the first chance he had really had to get to know her. Joanie was down with her monthlies and not feeling too good, so Mike had made a date with this Marge.
And now here they were in her house, on the South Side not very far from the University, and she was taking off her clothes for him.
Mike watched. He was sitting back comfortably in a living room chair with his feet up on a hassock, and a glass of Scotch in his hand. Marge's folks were away for the week end, visiting sick relatives up in Wisconsin. Marge had the place to herself for the week end.
Which was very, very nice, Mike Leonidas figured.
She had her blouse unbuttoned, and took it off and dropped it on a chair. She was tall, maybe five feet seven, and well built, slim everywhere except in boobs and butt, where Mike didn't like a girl to be the least bit slim. Her blonde hair was pulled back tight from her forehead and allowed to trail in a long ponytail that reached practically to her buttocks. For a while now, Mike had been wondering if that blonde hair was a bleach job or not.
He was going to find out, now.
Off came the tight slacks. She wore nothing but a bra almost ready to burst over her breasts, and a pair of panties, black and shiny, that hid the goodies beneath. She threw Mike a slit-eyed, languid smile.
"Which do you want to see first?" she asked huskily. "Top or bottom?"
"Top," Mike said.
Marge nodded. Her hands slid round toward the hasp in back. She moved with a grace that Mike appreciated. Something like a big cat. He was a fast man himself, and graceful, and he liked his women to have the same qualities.
The bra dropped away, baring the full, pale hills of her boobs.
Mike whistled.
Marge looked pleased. "You like them?"
"They're terrific, baby," he told her frankly.
He meant it. The kid had a tremendous pair. They really made the juices rise in Mike's lanky eighteen-year-old body. Marge's breasts were big and high, set very close together on her body. The skin of them was real blonde's skin-pale white, almost transparent, so the blue tracery of veins underneath showed. The nipples were small and dark, set high on the outcurve of her breasts. Mike could see the two heavy globes of flesh going up and down, up and down, with each breath she took, and he liked the effect.
She stood there with her hands on her hips, letting him look her over for a couple of moments. He took in the view happily. He liked a girl to have boobs of that general dimension. If-there was one thing he couldn't stand, it was a flat-chested chick.
"Now the panties," he ordered.
"Sure, Mike."
Long, tapering fingers went to the waistband of the black silk panties. She started to roll them down. She didn't hurry it. Down, down, inch by inch, over the swelling flare of her hips, then down a little lower, revealing the deepset socket of her navel, and still lower, and Mike caught his breath, and stared intently.
Yes, a real blonde. No doubt of it.
She pulled the panties off and flipped them aside. Now she was skin-bare, mother-naked.
She was quite a sight.
Since she was only fifteen, she had the first bloom of youth still on her, the glow of newness. Her breasts were only a couple of years old, and they hadn't had time to acquire that shopworn look yet. They stood away from her body as though they were made of plastic, a secret kind of plastic that had the mysterious magical property of looking and feeling just like live, breathing flesh. And her skin was smooth and shiny too.
But because, even though she was only fifteen, she had been around, she had a look of expertness to her. The sickly stare of innocence was gone from her. Mike didn't like virgins. In his book, virgins were good for nothing but raping. Give him an experienced girl every time, when it came to good honest fun in the rack.
"Turn around," he said. "Let's get the picture in three dimensions, huh?"
Obedient as ever, Marge turned, slowly, like a mannequin on a rotating pedestal. She gave him the three-quarter view, so he could see the way her deep breasts stood out from her body, and then she turned in profile, letting him observe the full swell of her breasts and buttocks, and the straightness of her spine and the perfection of her legs, and then finally she swung around with her back to him, letting him see the two heavy pink globes of her buttocks, exploding in sensual fullness from the trim narrowness of her waist, and diminishing again into the flawless columns of her thighs.
Then she swung around again.
"Well?" she asked. "Do I pass inspection, Mike?"
"You sure as hell do, baby," he told her.
She stood there waiting for him. Mike let her wait. In his position, he never had to hurry for anything. It was all his, when he chose to take it. He had a kind of divine right to anything connected with George Morris Vocational High School. He was the boss.
Patiently, Mike finished his Scotch and put the empty glass dawn on the end table. He stood up. He began to undress.
Slowly, while the naked girl stood there and waited for him.
He liked being the boss. He enjoyed the feel of power in his hands. He didn't understand how anyone could ever settle for being less than the absolute tops not if the top was in his reach.
Mike had gone straight for the top. And that was why he was the boss of George Morris Vocational.
George Morris Vocational had always had a boss. That was the kind of school it was; that was the way it worked. The boss of the school was the student-that was what he was called, officially, but nobody at G.M.V.H.S. ever studied-the student who could round up the biggest gang of followers. As simple as that.
Before Mike Leonidas, the boss of the school had been a tall, iron-faced lunker named Danny Calderone. Mike Leonidas had waited his time, waited all through his freshman year, and at the beginning of his third term in the school he had busted into Calderone's group of followers and had challenged the top-man to a stand.
And Mike had humiliated Calderone.
From that day on, Calderone's power in the school was shattered; he went through his final months like a ghost, and dropped out, unremembered, at the mid-year break. And Mike Leonidas ruled the school unchallenged.
He ruled all through his sophomore year and through his junior year without even a sign of a challenge. The other students got out of the way when he came down the hall. The class brains broke their backs to do his homework for him. The new kids paid tribute to him-one brick a head, at the beginning of each school year. Even the teachers were cowed. They knew instinctively that he was the boss, and they stayed out of Mike Leonidas' way. They were well aware that he had no fear of their alleged authority, and they weren't anxious to become martyrs to the cause of public vocational education.
The secret of Mike's success was his blade. He was a fast man with a shiv. He could flick a knife out and make a mark and get the knife out of sight again before his baffled victim knew what had happened, and there was only the bloody slash down a cheek or along an arm to provide evidence of the attack. Mike had cut rings around Danny Calderone with his blade, never inflicting a serious wound but always inflicting humiliating ones. Mike had made a fool out of Calderone with his knife. Once you make a fool out of a leader, he's no longer a leader. It's as simple a proposition as that.
In person, the current boss of George Morris Vocational High was not tremendously impressive. He was short and wiry, a lean five-feet-eight with high cheekbones and a sharp, vulture-like nose. In a school of six footers, five-eight was short. Mike's skin was swarthy and one of his eyebrows was slightly crooked, giving him a mean look even when he wasn't particularly trying to look mean. He was strong and quick, with wrists like steel cables, and nobody but nobody ever made a remark about his shortness. They all knew how fast Mike Leonidas could cut a six-footer down to size. Nobody got in the way of Mike Leonidas.
He peeled off his shirt and let his trousers and shorts drop, and he was naked.
The naked girl looked at him.
Mike knew he wasn't handsome in the conventional sense. Not at all. His arms and legs were too long, his trunk too short. He had the legs of a basketball star. Put those legs on a normal body and you'd have somebody about six-feet-three. But something had gone wrong when the parts were assembled for Mike Leonidas, and a stumpy body rode on his lanky legs.
Mike didn't worry about the way his body looked. He had one asset that in any girl's eyes canceled out all of his minor physical deficiencies. Marge was looking straight at it, and her eyes were taking on a glow of eagerness, of anticipation.
Of hunger.
Mike advanced toward her. He held out his arms to her She came toward him.
He grabbed her. He pulled her up against him. and the heavy rounds of her breasts jutted into his hard chest, and he put his hands on her jack and slid them the silken distance to her buttocks, and dug the tips of his fingers into those two resilient fleshy cushions.
Marge said, "We can go into my bedroom, Mike"
"Hell with that. We'll do it right here, okay? On the living room floor."
"Anything you say, Mike."
"Sure. Anything I say. You catch on."
He filled his hands with her breasts. They were such big breasts that they overflowed his fingers, and he couldn't contain them all. He parted the second and third fingers on each hand, letting the hard, swollen cherries of her nipples peep out between the fingers. Then he squeezed, suddenly, pinching in hard on the trapped nipples.
The girl winced and caught her breath.
"What's the matter?" Mike asked. "Did that hurt?"
"A little."
"You don't mind if I hurt you a little," he said, and it was a statement, not a question. "I get more kicks that way. And so will you."
"Anything you say, Mike."
She grinned at him. He gave her breasts another squeeze, coming in hard on the nipples, and she started to wince again and turned it into a smile. He saw the color stippling her cheeks, and knew that there was starting to be a pounding in her middle. Of course. Girls liked to have their boobs squeezed. It hurt them, but it pleased them too, Mike knew. A little roughness was always in order when you were heating a girl up.
He took his hands away. Then he slapped her. Not across the face but across the breasts. It was a light but crisp slap, with plenty of wrist action in it, and there was a sharp sound of impact, and her eyes went wide as he hit her, and then she was smiling, and even gasping a little, and he hit her across the breasts two or three more times, watching the heavy flesh jiggle and jounce, and enjoying the feel of solid flesh against his flicking fingers.
"Oh, yes, Mike," she moaned. "That feels good! I want you to hurt me, Mike! Hurt me! Hurt me!"
"Sure, baby," he murmured.
He caught her by the wrist and tugged her down on the floor with him. The floor was carpeted, but the nap of it had worn away a hundred years ago, and the surface of the carpet was hard and raw and prickly. Mike didn't care. He stretched out on his back and grabbed her and pulled her over on top of him, and she propped herself up on her elbows to look in his eyes, and she smiled at him, and he smiled back.
Then he lifted his hand and brought it down on the high curves of her buttocks.
Whack!
She jerked as though he had run electricity through her. Her face turned beet red and her lips started to quiver, and Mike knew she was right on the edge between tears and laughter, and he lifted his hand again.
Whack!
Whack!
Whack!
Right hand, left hand, right hand, left. Up and down, up and down, every circuit ending with a solid meaty smack. He couldn't see her buttocks, lying this way, but he knew that they must be an angry red color, now. His own body was tingling with excitement. He loved slapping a girl around before they made it. He especially loved spanking her, loved the feel of soft warm buttocks being punished by his calloused palms.
She looked wild, now. She obviously was reacting in a tremendous way to the spanking. Her whole body was flushed, and she was trembling, and her eyes were starting to turn misty.
There were plenty of other things Mike wanted to do with her. But they could wait for another time. He was red hot, and so was she, and the time had come to get down to the real business.
He rolled her off him and onto her back, and a moment later he mounted her. Mike didn't go for this man-underneath-girl-on-top business. That was for fags and tired old men, he figured. The man had to be boss, and that meant being on top. Whoever heard of running a show from the bottom of the heap? Mike topped her.
He reached down and found the satiny insides of her thighs, and jerked them apart. The girl made a little moaning sound and raised her knees, and arched her body toward him, and then her hand was going down into the space between their bodies, and she found him. All of him. Her hand was on him, measuring him, it seemed, and then she was guiding him, not that Mike needed much guiding at this stage of the game.
Her body rose to his.
She gobbled him up.
Mike smiled in pleasure as he sank into the warm, soft, snug harbor of her body. That was good. Oh, that was good, the best thing in the world. To come back to home, back to the starting gate, to slide into that sweet retreat of bliss-that was one of the big moments of life, a moment that couldn't be repeated too often.
Mike held still as their bodies joined. This girl was still a stranger to him. He hardly knew her at all, and he certainly didn't know her body, her responses, her reflexes. So he waited. In his position, he couldn't afford to goof, not even once. Let word get around school, "Mike Leonidas is a lousy lay," and he'd never live it down.
So even though it was the first time between him and this blonde girl Marge-though a long way for the real first time for either of them-he had to make it right.
He paused.
He listened to her breathing. Still pretty regular, not yet taking on the harshness of real excitement despite the spanking.
He reached down, underneath them, and got his hands on the globes of her buttocks. He squeezed and lifted, drawing her body upward, and she arched her back to help him, and he surged forward, to the depths of her. She accepted him until she could accept no more. Mike was a big man in the ways that counted.
They began to move.
Easily, at first, a slow steady rhythm, picking up in tempo as they went along. Now the breathing was starting to get a little ragged. Now she was starting to react. It didn't take much. For the first few seconds Mike had wondered if he had a frigid one on his hands, but now he realized that he had been as wrong as could be on that score.
She was on fire now.
He rammed into her brutally. The early gentle slowness vanished. Mike dropped that whole routine and let her have it with everything he had. And she came right back at him, thrusting and bucking and writhing underneath him. He knew that the rough carpet was sandpapering her buttocks, and that it had to hurt her to jump around in this frisky fashion, but he didn't mind it.
He drove deep, again and again and again.
She gasped and made throaty sounds. Then she stopped gasping as he pressed his lips to hers and duplicated the other effect by thrusting his tongue into her mouth. He found her tongue, hot and wet, and they touched, and moved, and all the time their bodies continued the ceaseless probing thrusts, faster and faster now, mortise accepting tenon twenty times a minute, warmth spreading over both of them in a marvelous radiance upward from the hips.
It's going to be a good owe, Mike thought.
It was going to be tremendous. Which was doubly gratifying, since this was their first time together, and the first time was often a rocky one until the couple got to pull in the same general direction.
Higher and higher, now. Faster.
"Oh, yes!" she cried. "Yes! Yes, Mike! Yes! Yes! Yes!"
It happened.
It happened to her, and then to him, and it was still happening to her when he finished. He held onto her, his body quivering, and her strong, young legs gripped him and she continued to move, until she got up over the crest and came drifting down the other side, and ever so gently returned to earth.
They kept their bodies joined, but he rolled partly off her, and they lay side by side. Mike reached over and put a hand over one of her breasts. The nipple was still hard, but softening rapidly. She was no faker. She had been there, all right, and now she was ready to take a little rest.
She turned to him.
"That was good," she whispered. "That was terrific, Mike."
"Yeah," he said.
"Am I going to be your regular chick, Mike?" He shrugged. "We'll see how it works out."
"You mean, with Joanie and all?" He scowled at her. "I said we'll see!" he snapped.
"Don't bug me, Marge. I can't stand being bugged."
"Yeah, Mike. Sorry, Mike. I didn't mean-"
"Okay. Okay. Skip it."
He played with her breasts a while. Then he said, "I could use some more Scotch."
She slipped free of him and rose, and went over to her old man's sideboard for a refill. Mike lifted his head and looked at her, the glowing blondeness of her, the slim nudity interrupted by the sudden heavy thrusts of breasts and buttocks. She was okay. A damned sexy kid. And only fifteen, only a sophomore. Although she had had it plenty, Mike figured. He would have to find out all about her past. He liked hearing a girl talk about getting laid.
She put ice cubes in his drink and brought it back to him. Mike nodded without thanking her, and took the glass from her.
He drank for a while. Then he put the almost empty glass down.
"Let's hammer another nail, baby," he said hoarsely.
"Sure, Mike."
He turned to her. She opened for him in warm welcome, and he took her and they went riding off to bliss.
It's a damn good life being the boss, Mike thought. A damn good life.
Hell, it was the only life.
CHAPTER TWO
It was the beginning of February, the beginnings of of the second semester of the school year. Midwinter snow was on the ground, but an early, partial thaw had turned it to ugly, gray slush. The power shovels had heaped it by the sides of the streets in mounds five feet high, mounds already turning black with soot, and incrusted with garbage and filth of all kinds Mike Leonidas hated the sight of snow on the ground. He told himself that in a couple of years, when he was out of school and making it big in the real world, he'd try to work it so he could spend his summers in Canada and his winters in the Tropics, and just the good halt of the year here in Chicago. That would be the life.
It was the start of Mike's eighth and final term at George Morris Vocational High. In a week he was going to be eighteen. He could have quit school a long time ago, of course, but he knew that that would have been a dumb move to make, a real goofy one. School was no sweat for him. Why quit? He had plenty of joes to do his homework, and none of the teachers dared flunk him in any subject anyway. And he enjoyed the feeling of power it gave him to be the Number One cheese of the school.
He was smart enough to know that here in George Morris Vocational, he was the biggest fish in a small pond, while in the outside world he'd be just another punk minnow in the ocean. What he had accomplished here in school, he'd have to do all over from scratch once he got outside.
Besides, he knew how useful a high school diploma could be in getting a job and stuff like that. So he stayed on in school long after the legal age for voluntary quitting. In June, though, he'd be getting his diploma and an escort to the door, and good old GMVHS would be getting a new boss.
Who?
Mike often wondered who'd come after him. The next boss wasn't likely to be any of the younger fellows in his gang of followers, the sophs or freshmen. Most probably his successor would come from the ranks of third-year men, guys like Artie Novik or Dave Herst. Unless, of course, one of his fellow seniors got flunked and stayed around for another term, which would give him a clear shot at the number one rank.
Mike remembered when he had taken over. Only a snotty-nosed fifteen-year-old soph, that's all he had been, and he had been laying down the law to the whole school. Something like that wasn't likely to ever happen again, he thought with a touch of pride. Only Mike Leonidas had been big enough to take over a whole school when he was nothing but a stinking sophomore.
Now it was the beginning of the new term. In the school yard on the morning of the second day of the semester, Mike Leonidas was holding court before classes, leaning up against the battered old brick wall with half a dozen of his loyal followers gathered around him listening eagerly to every word he had to say. Joanie was with him, too. Marge wasn't. Mike had been thinking about both girls, the blonde and the brunette, and he was working out a way to keep both of them on the string. Marge was great-he had spent that whole wild weekend with her-but Joanie was great too, and Mike couldn't bring himself to dump one chick for the other.
So he was going to try to have them both. In his position, it was sometimes possible to have your cake and eat it too.
He hadn't told Joanie about Marge, yet. Joanie still thought she was his steady. She stood there, a tall black-haired girl with breasts like melons bursting out of her tight red sweater. Her jeans were so tight that they were like a second skin, the cleft between her buttocks clearly delineated. She radiated sex. She gave off an atmosphere of sex that made any room of men start to crackle with erotic tension.
Mike was talking about hockey, about the Chicago Blackhawks and the game they had played last night. Mike took hockey pretty seriously. In Chicago you couldn't be a baseball fan, not unless you enjoyed rooting for losers, but the Blackhawks sometimes did okay.
Mike was saying, "Imagine the way they blew that one. To the mother-frying Rangers, for God's sake! 3-0 lead in the third period and they blew it. You ask me, some of those guys oughta get new skates."
Everyone in the group nodded agreement.
Then Sammy Donohue came up. Sammy was a skinny blond third-year kid who worked in the Registrar's office for extra credit. Sammy wasn't a member of Mike Leonidas' gang, but he did whatever Mike told him to do, just like everyone else in the school.
At the beginning of each term, Sammy performed a little job for Mike. He copied down the names of the new students and brought the list to Mike, who made sure that every newcomer to the school kicked in his one-dollar "initiation" tribute.
It was February, mid-year, now, and there were no new incoming classes. New classes entered only in September, and that was when Mike made his really big haul, four or five hundred bucks in tribute. But there were always a dozen or so transfer students from other schools entering in mid-year, and Mike didn't believe in letting anybody escape untapped.
Sammy Donohue came up to Mike as he stood holding court in the school yard and said, "I've got the list for you, Mike."
"Okay. Hand it here."
Sammy reached into his pea coat and produced a sheet of ruled notepaper that had a row of names neatly printed on it in square block letters. He surrendered it to Mike, who looked down the list. It had only twelve names on it. Mike scowled.
"Pretty skimpy. You sure you brought me the whole list, Donohue?"
Sammy went pale and nibbled his lower lip. "Sure I'm sure, Mike. I copied it all down. There were only twelve transfers this time, Mike. I can't help that. It isn't my fault if-"
"Okay. Shut up," Mike Leonidas snapped. "If that's all there is, I guess that's all there is. How about the faculty list? You see that?"
Sammy nodded tensely. He looked scared half out of his wits simply from being this close to the dreaded Mike Leonidas.
"Yeah, Mike. We're getting three new teachers this term."
"Who?"
"An English teacher name of Kirkland, a math teacher named Dominici, and a shop teacher named lemme think a sec-name of Garvey."
"All men?"
"All men," Sammy said.
Mike cursed briefly. Each year, he hoped that some new women teachers would be assigned to the school. That would be a ball, having a few hot chicks on the faculty. But the only women teachers that came to George Morris Vocational were dried-up old leather battleaxes who looked like oversize frogs.
Once, two years back, the board of education had sent a pretty new teacher to the school.
Just once.
Mike remembered that deal.
Her name was Miss Sommers, and she was a real looker, stacked and everything, who wore tight skirts that showed off a cute, twitchy little butt. She hadn't been much more than twenty-four or so. Maybe the Board of Education had figured that the rough, tough students at George Morris Vocational would be so awed by the sight of a pretty girl as a teacher that they would obey her.
The Board of Education had been wrong.
The first week Miss Sommers was in the school, she got so many wolf-whistles that she hardly was able to teach anything. There were some pretty rough words used in her classrooms, too. Another girl might not have lasted a day. The first time some big ox rose in her classroom and said, "Teach, how would you like to-," another girl would have run screaming out of the place. But not Miss Sommers. Miss Sommers ignored the wolf whistles and the catcalls, and went bravely about the business of trying to teach.
The second week Miss Sommers was in the school, Mike Leonidas and two buddies caught her in the basement late one afternoon after classes, and tried to rape her.
Tried. They didn't score, to Mike's everlasting regret. They came close, though. They ripped her clothes half off. While Dave Herst and Artie Novik held her, Mike pushed her tight skirt up around her hips, and reached in past the straps of her garters and found the waistband of her panties, in among all the warmth of her thighs and belly, and he yanked the panties off her to expose the soft womanhood of her to their gaze.
She had kicked and screamed and cried. "I'm a virgin," she kept telling them. "Please don't touch me! I'm a virgin!"
"Sister, at your age it isn't healthy to be a virgin," Mike had told her, and Herst and Novik had guffawed in delight.
Mike could have had her right then. He would have found out whether or not she'd been snowing him about being a virgin. All he had to do was to take her. But no, he wasn't satisfied with getting the panties off her. He had to have a look at her boobies too, and make sure that everything in her blouse was real.
So he had ripped open her blouse and pulled open her bra, and there were her breasts, nice ones, a little bigger than medium, with neat little nipples. Mike had been just on the point of reaching out and putting his hands on them and giving them a good squeeze when the janitor came along, waving a coal-shovel, and they had had to scram, leaving her lying there with her skirt around her hips and her blouse open with her breasts hanging out.
So they hadn't gotten anything from her, unless you counted a look at her full round breasts, and a peek at the hidden secrets of her thighs. Mike had wanted more than that, but he had missed his chance.
And there was never any second chance, not with Miss Sommers. She never came back to teach at George Morris Vocational after that day. The limits of her endurance had been reached. Apparently she was a virgin, too, because she was too hysterical afterward to name or identify her attackers, and there had never been any comeback for Mike or his two cohorts.
Since then, all the new teachers assigned to George Morris Vocational had been either men or tough old maids. But Mike still had hopes that someday the Board of Education would send another Miss Sommers to the school. He wanted a second chance to rape a teacher. But it didn't look like that wish was going to come through, Mike thought.
Glancing contemptuously at Sammy Donohue, Mike said, "Kirkland English, Dominici math, Garvey shop. Okay. We'll keep our eyes open for them and let them know who runs this place. You can scram. Sammy."
Sammy scrammed.
Mike Leonidas glowered at the list of names Sammy had given him. Twelve transfer students. Twelve lousy names. Twelve stinking bucks. Last year there had been more than thirty newcomers at mid-year. Well, he'd survive the drop in revenue. There was a way around it.
Mike turned to the guys around him and said, "Take a look at this list. Each of you pick two names out and make yourself responsible for finding them. Tell them the score and collect a buck from each of them, like in September."
"A buck, Mike?" It was Johnny Burke, his lieutenant and second-in-command. "This is February. We usually only get half a buck in the middle of the year."
"And you don't think I know all about that?" Mike shot back.
"But-"
"This year we get a buck," Mike said. "We only got twelve names this time. We might as well work them for all we can get."
"Yeah, Mike," Johnny said. Nobody disagreed with Mike Leonidas.
Mike left them looking at the list, dividing up the names. As he walked away, Joanie came up after him.
"Mike?"
"Yeah, chick?"
"Am I seeing you tonight!"
"I don't know. You all finished with the troubles, kid?"
"Finished this morning."
"Okay. I'll see you tonight."
"I missed you, Mike."
"Yeah."
"Mike, I hear you were making it with a blonde this week end," Joanie said quietly.
He looked at her. "Where'd you hear that story, anyway?"
"A little birdie told me."
"Yeah?" he said, his voice still relaxed. "Well, what if the little birdie happened to be telling the truth? What about that?"
"You tired of me already, Mike? We've only been steadies five months. That ain't so long."
"Who says I'm tired of you, baby?"
"The blonde-"
"Just a hobby of mine."
"I'm still your chick?"
"Sure," Mike said. "And the blonde?"
"I told you. A hobby of mine. Maybe I feel like having two chicks for a while. At the same time. You mind that, Joanie?"
"I don't want to have to share you, Mike."
"Suppose you got your choice, Joanie Suppose you can either share me or not have any of me. Which do you want?"
She was silent for a moment. A long moment.
Then she looked down at the slushy pavement and said in a husky voice, "I'd share you, Mike "
"Okay, then. That's the way it's gonna be for a while"
"Who is she, Mike?"
"You'll find out. At the right time. Don't worry. You're still my chick, Joanie."
He reached out and put his hands lightly on the front of her sweater. Right out here in the school yard. It didn't matter a damn to him who might be looking. He put one hand on each full breast and gave a little squeeze. The flesh under the sweater was warm and firm.
He grinned at her. Then he turned and walked on into the school building like an emperor entering his palace.
He had three classes in the morning. First, Auto Repair shop, then English, and finally Electrical Wiring. Since it was only the second day of the term, nothing much was doing in any of the classes. The teachers were still calling the rolls, switching the seating arrangements around to avoid putting a couple of feuders side by side, and going through other administrative routines. Mike sat through the three classes without listening to very much of what was being said. There wasn't anything more he needed to know about English anyway, and Auto Repair and Electrical Wiring were old stuff to him by now.
Lunch break came. The gong clanged loud and clear. Mike was the first man out of the Electrical Wiring shop. He shuffled through the open door exactly two seconds after the gong had sounded, without waiting for the teacher to finish the sentence he was in the middle of, and headed down the stairs to the basement cafeteria.
He got in line and filled his tray. Others stepped aside as he moved past them down the counters. Mike never paid for his lunches. He just stood on line and told the servers what to give him, and they never argued because they knew it was smarter and healthier that way. One meatball more or less wouldn't be missed. So Mike did the city out of a buck's worth of food every day. None of the cafeteria workers ever said a word about it to their supervisor. That wouldn't have been too wise.
Mike took his seat at the bench that was reserved for him every day. His cohorts started arriving. Phil Longinotti was first, a long-legged, wiry Italian who had played varsity basketball until getting bounced from the team for banging a girl in the locker rooms, and Longinotti put two dollars down on Mike's tray.
"Membership dues," Longinotti said. "Collected from Les Broderick and Jim Howard."
"You have any trouble with them?"
Longinotti shrugged. "They didn't like the idea any. I told 'em what happened to guys that didn't pay, and they coughed up fast."
Mike smiled. There were always a couple of geeks each semester who didn't want to pay up when they were asked politely to ante. But somehow they had a way of always changing their minds when the right kind of persuasion was used on them. Mike believed firmly in not making an exception for anyone, no matter what. Once you let even one guy defy you, Mike knew, your entire power over the school is threatened and your position gets shaky.
While he ate, three more of Mike's men came up to hand over the tribute they had collected. Mike pocketed it all, since it was his due. He looked out for his guys, and in return they turned over the collections. Eight bucks so far. There had been plenty of grumbling, but everyone had come through with the money.
The fifth man had only $I.50 to hand in. "One of my guys only had half a buck in spare cash with him today," he explained. "He promised to bring the other half buck tomorrow for sure."
"What's his name?"
"Bill Randegger."
Mike noted the name down hi his mind. "Okay. Randegger owes us half a dollar. Get it from him first thing tomorrow."
The sixth man to report was Johnny Burke. He put a solitary dollar bill down on Mike's tray.
Mike squinted at it. "Looks like you only found one of your men, Johnny."
"I found them both." Burke's face was tight and tense-looking, the sign of trouble coming up. "One coughed up. The other one deadheaded."
"You tell him what was likely to happen to him if he didn't come across?" Mike asked.
Burke nodded. "He didn't give a damn, Mike. He said he wasn't paying any money to anybody, and that was that. Period. He didn't want to be pushed around, he said."
Mike's jaws firmed. A muscle started to pop. "What's this creep's name?"
"Lou Rickhardt."
"Point him out to me after lunch," Mike said in a calm voice. He throbbed inwardly at the thought of possible action. "I'll have a little talk with Mr. Rickhardt myself, that's what I'll do. In person."
CHAPTER THREE
It was against school regulations to leave the school grounds during the lunch hour. You had to stay behind the fence. That regulation was the result of a stream of complaints from the local shopkeepers, who were bothered by roaming gangs of tough boys and sometimes equally tough girls during lunch-time.
The candy store owners preferred not to have any mid-day customers at all, rather than to have customers who were likely to break the place up if they got into a rambunctious mood. So attendance was taken in the cafeteria just as if it was a regular class, and after he had eaten a student could go up to the school yard but not leave the grounds.
Not even Mike Leonidas cared to break this rule, because a cop on the corner kept an eye on the school yard gate just to make sure no one left, and Mike had respect for the powers of the police force.
Having finished eating, Mike went up the poorly Ht stairs and out into the school yard to wait until the end of the recess hour. The school yard was slushier than ever, since it was a mild day and the banks of dirty snow were beginning to melt.
Almost automatically, as Mike took up his position lounging against the wall, a band of his followers began to collect around him, as if he gave off some sort of warming radiation. Mike Leonidas never deigned to smile at them or otherwise to acknowledge their devotion. Like any reigning monarch, he took his position for granted, and expected others to show their respect.
Joining the group, Johnny Burke pointed across the yard and said, "There he is."
"Rickhardt?"
"Yeah, Mike. The tall kid over there."
Mike's glance crossed the school yard. There was a tall boy in a navy blue pea coat, leaning against the far wall with his hands stuffed in his pockets. Since he was new in the school, a complete stranger, he stood by himself, looking around. He was big. He had a solid, competent look about him.
He probably thinks he's tough stuff, Mike Leonidas thought scornfully. I'll show him who the boss is around this place, Chough.
"Go get him over here," Mike said. "Tell him I want to talk to him."
Burke nodded and sauntered away, crossing the yard at a steady pace. Mike Leonidas watched with interest. Burke was big and thick through the shoulders, but this new kid was even bigger.
Burke had reached him now. Burke was saying something to him. The new kid stared down at Johnny without smiling, and answered. Burke said something else. The new kid shook his head.
Burke pointed across the yard to where Mike leaned against the wall.
The new kid just shrugged.
Burke walked away, crossing back to Mike's spot.
"Well?" Mike demanded.
Burke shrugged. "He won't come, Mike. He acts real tough. He says he isn't going to be told what to do around here. Should I round up some of the guys and bring him over, Mike?"
Mike shook his head. This was the first real opposition he had had in a long, long time, and he welcomed the challenge. He had been getting a little bored with the mob of yes-men that clustered around him these days.
"Uh-uh," Mike said. "Don't do that. I'll go over and have a little talk with this guy myself. The rest of you just stay behind me and watch what happens."
Mike strolled easily, casually across the yard. The big boy still leaned against the wall, hands thrust into his pockets in an insolent, to-hell-with-you kind of pose. He looked at Mike without interest.
Mike walked up very close to him and said, "Hey you."
"Yeah?"
"Your name Lou Rickhardt?"
"Maybe."
"Don't give me that maybe jazz!" Mike snarled. He sized the other boy up. Big and strong. Six feet one, two hundred pounds. No fat on him. Mike said, "Are you Rickhardt or aren't you?"
"What the hell business is it of yours?"
"Everything that goes on around this school is my business, bud. My name's Mike Leonidas."
Rickhardt gave him another few seconds of the blank stare. Then he began to laugh.
"You-Leonidas?"
"What the hell's so funny?"
"One of your goons tried to shake me down this morning," Rickhardt said. "He wanted me to give him a buck just for the privilege of going to school here. That struck me as a hell of a funny idea. Did he tell you what I told him?"
"All I know is you didn't come across," Mike said in a coldly menacing voice. "That's all. And I don't like it. Around here nobody says no to Mike Leonidas. You got that straight?"
"I say no to him," Rickhardt shot back. "How do you like that one? You lousy half-pint Hilter, why should I pay cash to you? This is a public school. I got as much right to go here as-"
"What did you call me?" Cold anger glittered in Mike Leonidas' close-set eyes.
"I called you a half-pint Hilter," Rickhardt replied evenly. "A lousy half-pint Hilter."
Mike's fists balled. Here in the school yard at lunch time, even he did not dare to take out his knife. He swung a lot of weight in this school, but he recognized that there were some limits on his power, and to start waving a switchblade around in the school yard could get him into a lot of hot water. But he longed desperately to slice out Rickhardt's tongue for the mocking words he had just uttered and twice repeated.
Mike said, "Around here words like that can get you bruised real hard, buddy. I'm gonna put those words back down your throat."
Rickhardt didn't move. "If you want a fight, I'll give you one."
"I'll cut you to pieces."
"You make a lot of noise, little man."
Mike took a deep breath. The others were watching from a short distance away, waiting to see how he was going to handle the situation. His authority was at stake, he knew. He was called on to act.
"Let me give you the pitch once more," he said in a level voice. "Around this school what I says goes. And I say you owe me one buck registration fee. Are you gonna hand it over?"
"Leonidas, you can take your fee and shove it," Rickhardt said coolly. "You hear what I said, Leonidas? Shove it."
Mike gave a barely-perceptible signal with his right shoulder, and moved in on Rickhardt. Burke and Novik and Herst were right behind him, slanting in from the sides, and plenty of others around the yard stopped to watch Mike Leonidas show the greenhorn the ropes.
Mike's fist licked out. The other parried the blow with a quick motion, but Mike smashed upward at him again, hard, and at the same moment Burke and Novik hit him from opposite sides. The new boy swore.
"One at a time, damn you! Take me on one at a time and I'll chew up all of you!"
They didn't listen. They piled into him furiously from all sides, landing telling blows. Big as he was, the newcomer could not defend himself against such an attack. He turned and dodged, striking back where he could, but mostly trying to avoid getting his ribs broken by the savage jabs.
The fight was over in a minute or so, and before any real damage could be inflicted. Mike heard a whistle scream shrilly. He felt a big, cold hand tighten on his shoulder and pull him roughly away from Rickhardt.
It was a new sensation for Mike Leonidas to be grabbed and pulled around in this yard. He turned in surprise, and found himself in the grip of one of the new teachers. He was a big fellow, six feet three or so, who looked and handled himself like an ex-Marine. A ring of other teachers stood by sheepishly, not wanting to intervene in the fight themselves.
The new teacher glanced at Rickhardt and said, "You'd better get inside. Go to your first class. And the rest of you, break this up!"
Rickhardt disappeared into the school building, dabbing blood from a cut lip. The teachers, having ended the fight without much difficulty, moved away.
Mike stared bitterly after them. His cheeks were red with shock, his entire body tingled. He turned to Burke and said, "Who's that guy-that big bastard who grabbed me by the shoulder?"
"He's the new teacher in the Sheet Metal shop."
"Garvey? That the one?"
"Yeah," Johnny said. "Garvey's his name."
Mike shook his head. "That boy's in for a wising up. Somebody shoulda told him he can't muscle Mike Leonidas around. We're gonna get that guy."
"Get a teacher?" Novik asked hoarsely.
"Why not? We got the Sommers dame, didn't we?"
"That's different. That was a broad. She got so wild she couldn't name us. But this guy-"
"I tell you we're going to get him," Mike said grimly. His shoulder still blazed where Garvey's big hand had dug in. "This one thinks he's something special. We gotta bring him down off his high horse and show him the way things work around here. But first we hafta get this punk Rickhardt. He was lucky and got away this time, but we'll get him and mess him up a little."
"Today?" Herst asked.
Mike nodded. "Well wait for him after school today. And then we'll grab him and shove some of those fancy words back down his filthy mouth. We'll show him. We'll really waste him."
The afternoon passed rapidly. At ten minutes to three the dismissal gong sounded, and the hundreds of so-called students of George Morris Vocational High School spilled out onto the streets. The school had two wings, a domestic arts school for girls and a vocational training school for boys, and out they came from both exists, the girls in their sweaters and skin-tight jeans, the boys in their black leather jackets, shouting and whooping and light-heartedly terrorizing any pedestrians who had the bad luck to happen to be going past the school at the moment of dismissal.
In the confusion and tumult, though, one small group of six took no part in the daily outburst that celebrated freedom. They moved through the heaving chaos with steady purposefulness.
They were Mike Leonidas and five of his closest followers. They had been poised and ready to leave at the crack of the dismissal signal, and they had made it down the stairs in record time, taking the steps three at a time, to station themselves at either side of the great stone arch that was the school's main exit. Thanks to their quick start, they reached the arch a full minute ahead of the main flow of students.
Now they waited, eyeing everyone that went through the arch, looking for the victim.
Nearly half the population of the school had passed under the arch before Lou Rickhardt came along. Johnny Burke was the one who spotted Rickhardt first. Burke caught sight of the tall boy's blond crew cut sticking up above the other heads.
"Here he comes, Mike," Burke whispered.
"Okay," Mike said quietly. "We'll teach him a little lesson now. But good."
Mike gave a signal to the others. Thirty feet away, on the far side of the arch, Novik, Herst, and Longinotti waited. Over here, with Mike, it was Burke and Jack Pappas keeping watch.
Rickhardt came closer to the arch.
As he approached, Novik, Herst, and Longinotti began to cut toward the middle of the advancing column of boisterous boys, while Burke and Pappas edged in from their side. It was an action that had been used many times before, and the movement was timed perfectly.
Just as the flow of dismissed students brought Rickhardt under the arch, Novik and Burke stepped up to him and grabbed him by the arms, while Pappas and Dave Herst caught him by the waist from behind, and Longinotti stood in front to clear the way.
Mike followed along. The current of the crowd took them right out of the arch and onto the street. There was a cop on the corner, but he couldn't tell much about what was going on. There was no room in the press of the mob for Rickhardt to struggle.
"What the hell-" he muttered.
"Just move along with us," Burke murmured. "Don't raise a fuss. Just keep moving."
They swept the twisting Rickhardt down the block, away from the policeman, and into an alleyway set between two small private homes. The alley had not been cleared of snow, and now it was piled high with mounds of soft, sooty slush.
Rickhardt pulled free of his captors. They made no attempt to hang onto him. He was hemmed in, in the alley, with three men in front of him and three behind him, and all six ready to jump toward him at the first sign that he was trying to make a break for freedom.
But Rickhardt did not try to bolt. Nor was there any hint of fear on his face, only annoyance and cold anger.
He said thinly, "Just what do you guys think you're up to? You can't-"
Mike cut him off curtly. "Shut your mouth. You're gonna be taught a lesson, wise guy. Around this school you don't talk back to Mike Leonidas."
"Says who?"
"Says me, you lousy mother-fryer." Mike gestured. "Grab his arms."
Four of them moved in on him. Rickhardt swung around and lashed out, catching Artie Novik in the face with his fist and momentarily staggering him, but a moment later the scuffle was over. Rickhardt was subdued, Novik and Burke were holding his arms twisted up in an unbreakable hammer lock.
Mike stepped forward, calmly, confidently. He said, "What year are you in, big-mouth?"
"I'm a senior." Rickhardt was still glaring in hatred, showing no fear.
"Where'd you go to school before this?"
"Havemeyer Vocational."
"How come you transferred?"
"That's none of your damn business."
Mike scowled. "You give nice answers to me, you hear? You don't shoot your mouth off. I warn you about that. You must have been pretty tough at Havemeyer, huh? Well, well show you a little what it's like to be tough here. Hit him in the belly, Dave."
At the order, Herst came forward and punched Rickhardt, a short, sharp jab to the gut that all too obviously rammed into a solid wall of rock-hard muscle. Rickhardt didn't even grunt. In answer to the punch, he lashed out with his foot, nearly catching Herst in the groin. Herst hopped back, cursing, and rubbed his thigh.
"Hit him again," Mike ordered coolly.
For a minute or two, Herst and Pappas worked Rickhardt over, delivering a series of precise jabs. At the end of it. Rickhardt's lip was puffing and his breath was coming hard. A little dribble of blood ran from his lower lip down over his chin and stained the collar of his shirt.
Rickhardt glared at them and muttered, "If you chicken louses would onfy let go of me and fight fair, one at a time-"
"Hit him again," Mike commanded.
They gave him another working-over, in face and belly. Mike watched, calmly. He enjoyed watching. This part of the operation was necessary, Mike felt, to demonstrate to Rickhardt how dangerous it was to fool around with the leadership.
"Okay. Enough," Mike said after a few moments more. "Now, Rickhardt-what do you have to say?"
"I say you're a sawn-off runt of a little pipsqueak," Rickhardt spat defiantly through bloody, swollen lips. "That you're a lousy, yellow-bellied little punk who's afraid to fight man-to-man."
Artie Novik looked at Mike. "Should we hit him again?" he asked eagerly.
Mike smiled. "No. Just hold him."
He wasn't afraid of taking Rickhardt on in single combat. But the team operation was better from the point of view of striking terror into Rickhardt.
Mike took out his switchblade. With a little click the keen, gleaming blade came shooting out of the haft. Rickhardt stared with a tense, frozen-eyed fascination at the glittering shiv.
"You know what I'm gonna do now, Rickhardt?" Mike asked softly. "I'm gonna cut your guts out."
He weaved the blade around and suddenly it shot out. inscribing a little X on Rickhardt's cheek. That was just to demonstrate aim and striking speed. The wounds were just scratches. They were deep enough to sting and draw blood, but they wouldn't leave permanent scars on Rickhardt's face.
Mike went into his weave again. Rickhardt watched coldly, unable to move. Again the knife slashed out with blinding speed, and again a trickle of blood appeared, this time on the taller boy's other cheek. This time, the cut was a little deeper.
"I'm gonna put my mark on you," Mike told him crooningly. "Just so you remember who Mike Leonidas is. Just so you know how to behave, the next time."
Again Mike went into the weave. He shifted the knife from hand to hand, tossed it back and forth in the pattern of deception that had hypnotized so many of his enemies. He took deep pleasure in showing off his reflexes, his skill with the blade. It was almost a sexual thing. His whole body throbbed with excitement, and he savored the pleasure of wielding the blade just as at another time he would get a different thrill from wielding another kind of weapon, a weapon of the flesh.
The knife darted out again. A thin, bloody line appeared on Rickhardt's face just half an inch below his left eye. For the first time, Rickhardt seemed genuinely shaken. That had been close. Just a slight miscalculation and the knife would have plunged into his eyeball. Of course, Mike didn't miscalculate when he used the blade, but Rickhardt had no way of being sure of that.
Mike smiled. Now another line, he thought, under the other eye "Hey! The fuzz!" Pappas screamed suddenly. He was standing lookout, right at the front of the alley, and had turned around to sound the warning.
Mike scowled and his knife slid out of sight in a hurry. He glanced behind him. No sign of any cops yet. They were probably coming up the block on regular patrol. They had a little time left.
Mike said, "Let's give him a couple more for good measure. Then well scram."
Fists and feet pummeled Rickhardt. He tried to fight back, and landed one roundhouse right before be ins; knocked to his knees. He knelled, swaying dizzily. Blood from his lips and nose mingled with the blood of the shallow cuts Mike had inflicted.
Rickhardt looked groggy now. Novik and Herst kicked him again and again, stomping on him as he lay limply on the slush-covered ground. Mike watched in pleasure, and felt his body heating up, felt the throbbing in his groin, and told himself that tonight he was going to give Joanie a real workout to top off a good day.
Rickhardt was face down in the slush. Finally Mike said sharply, "Okay! Enough! Enough! Over the back fence and let's get the hell out of here!"
Herst and Novik stepped back. Rickhardt stirred a little, but didn't rise.
Leaving him where he lay, they scrambled hastily toward the back fence just as a wandering policeman came strolling past the mouth of the alley. Mike turned at the last moment and saw Rickhardt groan and try to sit up. Then Mike nimbly scaled the fence. He came down lightly on the other side in a snowbank, and scrambled out, and ran for it across the dreary streets as the darkness of the winter afternoon descended.
CHAPTER FOUR
HOME.
A Home wasn't much. Home was three small rooms on the second floor of a three-story, frame shack that had been built seventy years ago. Home was the smell of boiling cabbage, home was a cramped sweaty place with dirty windows, home was discomfort and ugliness and filth.
Mike Leonidas didn't spend much time at home.
Nobody cared, really. His father certainly didn't care, because old man Leonidas had taken off for Kansas City when Mike was three, and hadn't been heard from since. Mike's older brother George didn't care, either, because George was married and lived on the North Side and worked for a stockbroker and wouldn't dream of setting foot in the slum where he'd been raised. Mike's mother didn't care, because she had been so beaten down by life that she just sat there not caring about anything much. There was nothing to come home to. Mike's mother had never really learned English too well, and Mike didn't know any Greek to speak of, so mother and son didn't communicate particularly. Mike's mother had her own drab little life-the government checks, and the city welfare checks, and the weekly checks from the prospering son, the guilt-offering from the North Side. She had her friends, the worn-out Greek housewives who lived all up and down the street. She didn't need Mike, and Mike didn't need her, and it was fine with both of them.
So Mike came home only for meals and to sleep, and sometimes not even then.
Today's homecoming was a typical one. Mike pushed the door open and let himself in. When there was nothing to rob, there was no sense locking the door. His mother was in the kitchen, supervising some sort of stew. He nodded at her. She nodded at him. No words were exchanged.
He went to his room and got a dime from his dresser, and went back out of the apartment, down to the pay telephone on the ground floor. There was only the one telephone in the whole building.
He dropped the dime in the slot and dialed Joanie's number. Four rings, then Joanie answered.
"Hello?"
"Hi."
"Hi, Mike. What's on?"
"You're on," Mike said. "Tonight."
"Where?"
"Your place?"
"No good," Joanie said. "Folks are going to be home tonight."
Mike shrugged. "We'll go for a drive, then."
"It's supposed to be cold tonight."
"There's a heater in the car," Mike said. "You get ting picky or something?"
"No, Mike."
"Okay, then."
"What time?"
"Seven," Mike said. "I'll be over."
"Sure, Mike. I'll be ready right on time."
"Yeah," he said. He dropped the phone back on the hook and turned away, going through the gloom and up the stairs again.
Tonight, he figured, he'd give it to Joanie good. And tomorrow in school he'd see Marge and spell out the pitch to her. Then, maybe tomorrow night, he'd get both Marge and Joanie together.
They'd have a ball.
All three of them.
Mike smiled as he thought of it. That was one bit he had never tried before, but now the time was ripe for it. He went into his room, closed the door, kicked his shoes off.
He picked up a copy of Batman and started to leaf idly through it.
But his mind was on Joanie and Marge, Marge and Joanie. The two of them and him, making it all in one big bundle of happiness together.
That would be something, Mike thought.
Really something.
Dinner was a silent business of sitting across the table from his mother and spooning stew into his mouth. He washed the stew down with plenty of beer. There was a grocery nearby that sold Greek beer, Fix, and his mother always kept plenty of it in the house. That was one good thing about living at home, at least, Mike figured. All the beer he could drink, and good beer.
When he was finished, he rose from the table and said, "Going out, Mom."
She nodded. She didn't ask him where he was going, or what he was going to do, or what time he would be coming back. She knew, by this time, that she wouldn't get any answer. Besides, she didn't care. Not any more.
Mike went out.
The temperature had dropped again, and the slush that had melted during the day was icing up fast as the mercury edged down toward 20. Mike shivered. He hated the winter, hated the lousy grayness of it, the cold, the dirty snow piled everywhere. One thing about winter, it was a problem finding a place to get laid. You couldn't just go to a park and crawl under a bush, not unless you found a girl who didn't mind freezing her butt off. You had to do it indoors, which posed problems, or else you had to do it in a parked car, which posed different problems.
Once upon a time Mike and his bunch had had a clubhouse. Not very long ago, either. It had been a three-room shack on a vacant lot, small but perfectly good for their purposes, and nobody seemed to mind their using it. But then some rumhead had crawled in there one night when no one was around, and managed to set fire to the place. It finished him off, and it finished the clubhouse too.
That had been in the middle of January. Since then, they'd been homeless, and it forced them to scatter every evening and shift for themselves. Mike didn't like it, and he kept trying to find some new clubhouse, but so far nothing had come to light.
He reached his car. It was a '51 Mercury that he had picked up for nickels and had rebuilt practically from the wheels up, using parts filched at school. The car still wasn't in perfect shape, but it was five thousand per cent better than when Mike first bought it. He liked to take it out on the Northwest Expressway and run it up to a hundred, a hundred-ten. It took the jolts like a Cadillac. But in the wintertime Mike didn't do much rodding, not on those crazy iced-up roads. The percentages were against you.
He had some trouble getting into the car. Melting slush had dripped down on it out of the buildings overhead, and the slush had formed a cocoon of ice. He had to chip the ice away from the keyhole simply to get into the car, and he had to scrape the windows too. Then there were problems starting the car. He hadn't used it in three days, and the cold weather had gotten a grip on the engine.
It took some work to make it turn over. But finally it coughed into life, and he headed for Joanie's.
She lived four blocks away. He pulled up outside the house, and honked, and there she was. She was wearing a bulky green sweater and a plaid skirt, and her black hair was whipping in the wind.
Mike smiled. Smart girl, he thought. She could look ahead. Most girls, in this weather, would have put on a pair of jeans. But Joanie knew that they'd be making it in a parked car, and jeans would be trouble in that kind of crowded situation. She'd have to take jeans off or he couldn't get in. With a skirt, all she had to do was push it up around her waist, presto jingo. A smart cookie, all right.
He opened the door for her, and she got in. "Hi," she said. "Jeez, what a freeze."
"The heater's on," Mike said. "You'll be okay in here."
"I hope so," she said. She wriggled up close to him and put her lips up. He brought his face down on hers. Her mouth was soft and yielding and wet, and her lips parted for him, and his tongue went in deep.
At the same time he reached one enormously long arm down, down below her knees, and ducked under her skirt. He felt cool, smooth skin. She had no stockings on, and, as he moved his hand higher, he discovered that she had nothing else on either under the skirt. His hand encountered the satiny skin of her thighs, and then went higher, to the curving round of her belly, and he could feel the high-piled richness of her loveliness against his palm.
He let a questing finger probe for warmth. Joanie shivered in delight. She pulled her lips free of his and murmured, "I want you, baby. I want you bad."
"Same here, kid."
"Let's go, then. We can't do it out here, Mike. Let's go where we can."
"Sure thing," he said with a grin.
He got the car moving. Joanie snuggled up next to him. She took his right hand from the wheel and put it under her body, sitting on it as he drove. He could feel the warmth of her naked buttocks against his outspread hand, and his three middle fingers extended forward while pinky and thumb dug into the firm globes of the buttocks. It was warm there, and good. As he drove, his fingers went exploring. Joanie was easy to excite, and before he had driven more than a block or two, he could tell that she was ready to go. She kept clenching and relaxing her thigh muscles, gripping his hand and releasing, gripping, releasing.
He drove up to 47 th Street, then headed west for a while, into the stockyards area. They were building a new highway spur here, and a whole big area was completely deserted, no houses, no streets, no lights. It was ideal for parking and having some fun.
Mike pulled the car over the crunching snow and brought it to a halt in a dark corner of the construction area. Here, the street had a kind of beauty, the unploughed snow lying like a blanket over the ugly scar of the construction. Mike yanked the hand brake, then reached over and opened the window on his side of the car.
"Brrr," Joanie said. "Why'd you do that?"
"Ever hear of carbon monoxide, stupe? Sitting here in a parked car with the engine going and the windows closed? I ain't ready to cash in yet. You?"
"I guess not."
"So we'll leave the window open. Don't worry, baby. I'll keep you warm."
"I know you will, Mike."
He grinned at her. She was okay, he thought. The first time he had had her it had been like an H-Bomb going off inside him, and he had never stopped feeling the excitement of being near her, of handling her, of having her handle him. Even his interest in Marge didn't diminish his yearning for Joanie. He could hardly wait to get the two of them together in the sack with him at the same time.
He turned toward her. Her mouth was ready for him, and their tongues met. His hand, still caught at her thighs, moved with skillful rapidity, and brought a whole series of sighs and moans and gasps from her.
The other hand worked its way under her sweater and up in back. His fingers, as precise and as skilled as a surgeon's, found the hasp of her bra and easily opened it. The cups fell away, under her sweater, and he slid his hand in and over her bare breasts.
Joanie had big breasts. They were like two grapefruits growing out of her. Big breasts, big nipples, standing up hard and tall. Her breasts were even bigger than Marge's, although Marge had the edge in texture, in firmness, in the bloom of youth. But not by much. Joanie was seventeen, Margie fifteen, and that made a bit of a difference. Marge still had that wonderful newness about her. Joanie had been around, had been had, and it showed.
Mike worked on her breasts, moving from one to the other and back again, squeezing them, rubbing the nipples, cupping, pressing, rotating. Meanwhile his other hand kept busy under Joanie's skirt. And their tongues continued to have a little duel from mouth to mouth.
The world was silent outside. No traffic, no noise of any kind.
They were all alone.
And they had plenty of time...
They worked each other over for a while, not rushing it, no hurry to get to the finish. After a while they were both breathing hard, but there was still plenty of evening left, and they weren't minded to set a speed record.
Joanie said, "Let's go to the back seat now, Mike."
"Sure thing," he said. "You first."
He gave her a little boost and she scrambled up over the seat. As she rolled over, he reached up and playfully lifted her skirt. Her bare buttocks gleamed in the moonlight entering the car, two firm pale hillocks of taut flesh separated by a deep, shadow-accentuated cleft that disappeared in the mysterious well of her body. She giggled and tumbled over out of sight on the back seat. A moment later, Mike joined her there.
Now they had more room, with no steering wheel to cope with. Joanie stretched out on her side, and Mike lay down facing her. He drew up her skirt, as high as it would go, exposing the sleek nakedness of her thighs and belly. She smiled and stroked his cheeks, and dug her fingers into his thick, curly brown hair.
Then she bent forward, jackknifing on the seat, and drew his zipper down. Her eager hands went for their goal and found it, drew it out into the open. Mike quivered with need as she touched him, caressed him.
She leaned down. Her lips parted and took him in, and he sighed in pleasure as he felt the warmth, the moisture, the softness. Her head moved, up and down, and he stroked her jet-black hair as he accepted the stimulation. His breathing became noisy His body trembled. He thought again of the savage pleasure of wielding the knife, of cutting Rickhardt's face, and it reminded him of this other pleasure, and he asked himself why the pleasure of sex was so thoroughly bound up in his mind with the pleasure of inflicting pain, and he shrugged and told himself to stop worrying about such deep thoughts and just to take his kicks as they came along.
While Joanie did it to him, he got both his hand'; under her sweater and worked on her breasts, squeezing them as though milking them. He enjoyed the rubbery feel of them, the way they gave to his pressure and then snapped right back, the bounce, the resilience. Not all breasts were like that. He had made it with some chicks who had dangling cruddy breasts that felt like clay in your hands, dead clay. You squeezed them and they just sort of hung there. But not with Joanie's boobs. Or Marge's. They were alive, all the way.
Then she lifted her head and moved her body around, positioning herself on the seat of the auto, telling him with her body what she wanted.
Mike knew.
He bent down, and found the warmth of her belly, and moved lower. His tongue flicked out the way earlier in the day his blade had flicked out.
Joanie gasped.
Mike went to work on her. He stirred her and probed her and tickled her and heated her, and she moved and throbbed and made little soft moaning sounds. He burrowed his face down into the warmth of her body, his cheeks against her soft flesh, his nostrils full of the musky woman-smell of her, while his hands reached up blindly under her sweater and found the heavy globes of her breasts, and squeezed and squeezed again.
It went on for maybe five minutes.
Then she said, "Mike, now. Mike, I got to. I'm gonna explode if I don't. Mike."
"Sure, baby. Sure."
He lifted his head. Joanie lay back and assumed the position, lifting one leg and draping it over the front seat of the car, letting the other one dangle down onto the floor. Her body was flexed, ready. With easy confidence Mike hovered over her, maneuvering expertly in the cramped car. He felt her fingers on him. Then he moved downward.
It was all done in one motion, like a sword gliding into its scabbard. Joanie was expecting him, and welcomed him, and he drove to her, to her depths.
Joanie went wild.
The temperature outside the car was less than twenty above, but within the Merc it was strictly tropical. The air heated up. Mike moved in her, thrust and thrust again, and Joanie wriggled and writhed.
He got his hands on her breasts again. He gripped tight.
"That's it," she yelled. "Squeeze them, Mike! Hurt them! Make them ache, Mike!"
He felt the hard globes of flesh taut in his hands. He gripped them and squeezed, and continued to thrust with a bestial fury. They were both snorting now like animals in rut, and their hoarse sounds formed a harsh, ugly background to their act.
She responded, arching her body like a contortionist, rising high, driving him deep. He let go of her breasts and caught hold of her buttocks, and braced himself against the door of the car, and drove against her with renewed intensity. Her lips came up toward his and he took them, putting his whole mouth around hers, and in his frenzy he bit down, hard, into her lips, and she went stiff for a moment as the pain lanced through her, and Mike felt sudden ecstasy as he tasted her blood, warm and salty, ebbing into his mouth.
Then she began to gyrate in new frenzy, bucking and thrusting up against him until he thought she was going to rip herself apart. Mike went right along with her. But now he heard the soundless thunder of her climax, sensed the mighty rolling-up of forces within her, and he tensed for it, poised himself, waited for it, and then it was upon him and he joined it gleefully.
For a long moment body drove against body in culminating ecstasy.
Then came the moment of explosion, of fulfillment, of release.
And then peace.
It was the peace of exhaustion. They had driven their bodies to the limit, and could not possibly have endured such crests of voluptuous sensation more than another few seconds. Sated now, drained, depleted, they slumped down tiredly against one another. Joanie pressed his head against the front of her sweater, and he leaned on her breasts, on the lovely soft cushion of them, and dosed his eyes for a few minutes.
They rested a while. Then Joanie began to squirrel around on the seat, and a moment later she had her face in his lap again. Mike smiled. He sat hunched up in one corner of the car, with Joanie sprawled out along the back seat. He drew her skirt up, and there were her buttocks, pink and smooth, bare and warm and soft. As his body slowly returned to virility, he ran his hands lightly over the exposed area of her buttocks, then dug his fingers deeper into the soft firmness. Joanie's head began to move faster, up and down, up and down, and new surges of readiness went through him.
"Okay," he said finally. "Now."
He pulled her around. She sat straddling him, her skirt covering them both, her nakedness easily accessible underneath. Mike thrust upward into the promised land, and found it good. He got his hands under her sweater again, onto her firm full boobs.
Their bodies moved.
Twisted.
Crested the top.
Leaped.
And then they were chorusing again, and then it was all over, and she was slumping down happily on him, sleepily, and he felt tired himself, in a good way. He let her down off him.
She sighed. "You're the greatest, Mike. Absolutely the greatest ever."
He smiled. He reached out and got his hands on the ripe meat of her buttocks again.
An odd thought struck him: what would it be like to whip her? To have her stand naked in front of him, and leap and jump around as he slashed her across those solid buttock-cheeks with a whip or a cane or something?
The mere thought made his blood run faster. It was an idea, he thought. An interesting idea.
But not tonight.
They had had their fun for tonight.
They scrambled back into the front seat. Joanie leaned against him, and sang dreamy tunes as he drove her back home.
CHAPTER FIVE
Rickhardt was not in school the next day Mike was hardly surprised when Burke reported to him that there was no sign of him. Even though the cop's arrival had interrupted the fun before they had really let him have it the way Mike had hoped to, they had still managed to do a pretty good job on the new kid. Plenty of cuts and bruises, maybe even a broken rib or two. Maybe he was in the hospital, Mike thought. That would serve the bastard right. Mike was still sizzling over Rickhardt's remarks about his size. Nobody ever talked that way to Mike Leonidas. If Rickhardt ever showed his face around the school again, Mike vowed, he'd get his ears cut off.
Everything went smoothly that morning. The kid who had owed the half-buck in tribute paid it without a qualm. The kid who was supposed to have done the English homework for Mike turned in the paper. Mike helped himself to a double portion at lunch, and nobody behind the cafeteria counter dared to say a word against him.
Mike was smiling. He had this whole school by the short hairs. And whenever some dope thought he could stand up against Mike Leonidas, that guy got put in his place fast enough. Mike didn't think he'd have any more trouble out of Lou Rickhardt after yesterday. Rickhardt wasn't the kind who wanted to commit suicide.
There was only one problem for Mike, now: the new teacher, Garvey. Garvey, who had dared to grab Mike by the shoulder and pull him around.
That wasn't done around here.
Garvey would have to be taught a lesson too.
The other two new teachers had fallen in line fast enough. Kirkland, the English teacher, was a roly-poly, pasty-faced, flabby little man who obviously wasn't happy about being assigned to a tough vocational school, and who didn't intend to tread on anybody's toes if he could help it. Dominici, the new Math teacher, was a short, stocky, balding fellow, who looked like he might be able to handle himself in a fight, but who seemed to want mostly to stay out of trouble with his students.
Neither of them posed much of a challenge to Mike's dominion here. Mike got a report on both of them from men of his who were in their classes: both Kirkland and Dominici could be bulldozed easily, Mike learned. "Kirkland's scared and doesn't try to hide it," Mike was told. "Dominici's scared and does hide it. But not very well."
So they were no problems.
Not so with Garvey. The new Sheet Metal instructor was big and he was pretty young, and be evidently thought he was ore hell of a tough guy. He let it be known in his classroom that he wouldn't stand any junk from anybody. And by breaking up the schoolyard fight-and actually daring to lay hands on Mike Leonidas
-he had given evidence that he intended to make his weight felt around George Morris Vocational High.
Mike smiled to himself. He would show this tough boy where to get off, just as he had shown everyone else in this school who had ever tried to keep him from having his own way.
At lunch time, Mike put forth his plan, set it up as a trial balloon. Novik and Burke and the other members of Mike's inner circle were a little uneasy as Mike put it on the line for them.
Mike stared bitterly across the school yard at the tall figure of Garvey, who was talking with a couple of the other teachers. Nodding his head in Garvey's direction, Mike said in a low voice, "One of these days after school we hang around a while, until Garvey comes out. We follow him and see how he gets home from here, and we go after him. We catch him right near his home and smash him around a little."
"I don't like it," Johnny Burke said flatly. "He's a teacher. We can't go around stomping teachers. A teacher can get the law down on us."
Mike gave his lieutenant a cold, withering glare. "You chicken or something, Johnny?"
"I'm just being cautious, Mike."
Mike shrugged. If we work him over well enough, he'll be afraid to say anything. Six of us ought to be able to give him something hell remember for a good long time. You bring a big guy down and it can take all the fight out of him for keeps."
"And suppose be yells to the cops?" Novik asked. "What then, Mike?"
Mike said, "We'll wear handkerchiefs around our faces. He won't recognize us. As long as he can't identify us, we're safe. The cops can't arrest the whole goddamn school. And it'll be late afternoon when we do it, anyway. It'll be too dark for him to see much."
"I don't like it," Novik grumbled. "Jumpin' a teach ain't smart."
Mike threw him a blazing lance of contempt. "You turning chicken on me, Novik? You, Burke? Any of you guys chick-chick?"
Nobody answered. Mike smiled confidently. He was still the boss, and if he ordered it they'd all walk through fire for him rather than admit they were yellow. "Okay, then," he said. "It's agreed. We're gonna get Mr. Garvey and fix him a little."
"Today?" Burke asked.
Mike shook his head. "No, not today. We got to wait a couple of days, see how things shape up. There's no real hurry. Tomorrow, day after, it's all the same. As long as we get him. Well take care of Garvey the way we took care of that punk Rickhardt. We got to show these new guys their place in this school."
"Speaking of Rickhardt," Longinotti said. "I got some news."
Mike turned. "Yeah? You see him today?"
Longinotti shook his head. "Nope. He's absent today. The news I got isn't exactly about him himself, Mike."
"Come on. Out with it."
Longinotti grinned. "He's got a sister."
Mike's eyebrows lifted. "How old?"
"She's a sophomore," Longinotti said. "Around fifteen, I guess. My chick told me. They're in the same baking class. A real looker, too."
"A sister," Mike said softly. "Well, how about that. You seen her?"
"T sure have," Longinotti said. He whistled. "Stacked, but I mean stacked. Got a pair of boobs on her like this." He balled his hands and held them about a foot from his body. "A real beauty. But she looks like a kid, you know what I mean? I bet she's still cherry, Mike. I bet she is."
Mike's smile grew broader. "Rickhardt's got a sister, and the sister's got her cherry. Well, well, well. I wonder if we can do something about that. I just wonder. Well, well well."
Half a block away, in the girls' gymnasium, Joanie was doing her calisthenics in a half-hearted way. Her mind wasn't on exercise.
Her mind was on Mike Leonidas, and on her own immediate future as Mike's girl.
Everything had been going so well, Joanie thought, until this past week end. Mike was the top man in the school, and she was his chick, and life was a dream Then she had to get her lousy monthlies, and a cold on top of it, and she had to spend the whole week end in bed.
So Mike had gone out and found himself another chick for the week end.
This Marge. This blonde.
Joanie didn't feel angry toward Mike about It. She knew Mike, knew what his sex drive was like. If he had a week end to kill, and he didn't have a girl, he'd go out of his mind She hadn't been available, so he had started up with Marge. That was understandable enough. Joanie knew what the setup was.
But she didn't want the setup to become permanent.
Mike had given her some kind of line about taking on two girls, about sharing himself out between her and Marge. Joanie knew that that was a load of jazz. Sharing arrangements didn't work. Sooner or later, usually sooner, one of the girls got dropped from the arrangement. And nine times out of ten it was the older girl who got dropped. Mike had been having Joanie since last fall. Maybe he figured it was time for a change, and he would do it gradually, keeping Joanie around while he broke in the new girl, then dumping her a few weeks later.
Joanie didn't want that. She wanted to go on making it with Mike, and she didn't want anyone else cutting in on the deal.
Her status was threatened. As Mike Leonidas' steady chick, she had a special position around the school, a rank, that would automatically vanish two minutes after it became known Mike had dumped her. In herself she was nothing. As Mike's chick she was a wheel. Already, word had filtered around the school that Mike had spent the weekend with a blonde soph named Marge, and already Joanie was starting to get fishy looks in the hallways, as though it was starting to get around that she was on her way out.
She had to fix all that. Fast.
And none of this sharing jazz.
She had pretended to Mike that anything he said would suit her. But that had been a lie. She would have to take the law into her own hands, behind his back.
This Marge was right here in Joanie's gym, and the girls did their exercises in twenty rows of fifteen girls apiece, and Joanie could see Marge, all the way at the other side of the gym in one of the sophomore rows She was a big girl, as big as Joanie. The skimpy white gym suit showed off her body plainly Big boobs, nice butt the kind of girl Mike went for Looking across the gym at her rival, Joanie had to admit that Marge was built on practically the same scale she herseli was. But Marge was younger, two big years younger, and that might make some kind of difference in Mike's mind.
Joanie waited until the whistle sounded to end the gym period, and all the girls went trooping back to the locker room to take showers and get back into their street clothes. The lockers were assigned by your year, and Joanie, as a third-yeai girl, was ten rows up from the sophomore lockers where Marge would be dressing.
Joanie didn't bother to take her gym suit off. She went looking for Marge.
Looking for anybody in the locker room was a big job. The place was jam-packed with girls in all stages of nudity. It was a fantastic sight. Three hundred girls, most of them well-developed. Big ones, short ones, tall ones, skinny ones, fat ones. It was a peeping tom's paradise. As Joanie made her way down the rows, she saw a colored girl about six feet high, with breasts like two purple watermelons, stark naked, and then a slim little chick who could have posed for calendar pictures, and then a bunch of skinny sophomores, and then a row of girls with big boobs again. There were always a few dykes in the locker room, Joanie knew, and you had to watch out for them. They moved fast. They'd pinch your butt or squeeze your nipple, and if you didn't slap them down they'd move right in and proposition you. Last year, Joanie remembered, there had been two bull dyke seniors who made it right here in the locker room, with an audience. Joanie had been there and watched them licking and rubbing each other. They seemed to get kicks out of doing it in front of fifty or a hundred other girls, all of them stark naked.
Joanie caught sight of a blonde head.
There she was, now. Midway down the row, in front of her locker.
Joanie made her way toward her.
Marge had just come out of the shower, and she was naked and still damp, her skin wet and glossy. She stood by her locker, toweling herself off. Marge had quite a body, Joanie saw. Big pale breasts, close together, tiny nipples. A solid butt. Thin elsewhere, but stacked. No wonder Mike had fallen for her.
Joanie came closer. She felt that she had a little bit of an advantage, since she had a gym suit on and Marge was naked. Being naked can throw a girl off balance in an argument with another girl.
Joanie said, "Is your name Marge?"
The naked girl looked up. Her blue eyes showed no fear. "That's right," she said evenly. "Why you ask?''
"My name's Joanie."
"That's nice," Marge said without any show of interest.
"Mike Leonidas' Joanie."
Marge shrugged, her heavy bare breasts bouncing round. "What do you want me to do?" she asked. "Get down on my knees or something?"
"You think you're hot stuff, huh, Marge?"
"I'll pass," Marge said.
"You'll pass right into the junk heap if you don't watch out. I happen to know what you did last week end."
"I spent last week end shacking up with Mike," Marge said levelly. "You looking to make something out of it? Because if you are-"
Joanie felt her heart pounding. She hadn't been faced with this kind of snottiness before. She sized the other girl up. Marge was as big as she was, and just about as strong.
Joanie said, "I just want to warn you, kiddo. Mike is mine. You stay away."
Marge shrugged. "I didn't chase after him. He came after me. You may be Mike's, but he sure as hell isn't yours."
Joanie's nostrils flared. "Maybe, maybe not. But you play it smart and keep away from him."
"How do you want me to do that?"
"Next time he asks you out," Joanie said, "You tell him you're busy. Tell him you're somebody else's steady. That you won't be able to date him any more."
"And if I don't?" Marge asked.
"I'll fix you," Joanie said. "I'll fix you so Mike won't be interested in you any more. Or anybody else. You won't be so pretty if I knife up those big boobs of yours. Or if I cut your lips off. That kind of thing happens around here, you know It could happen to you. There was a girl last year, got into a fight with this other girl. The other girl took a knife, stuck it in the first girl's-"
"Skip the stories," Marge said. "I don't scare with words."
"You're being stupid," Joanie said. "I'm warning you nice and easy. Mike is mine. Are you going to listen to me, or do I have to-"
"Why don't you go shove yourself?" Marge asked quietly. "Go shove good and hard, and stop bugging me."
Joanie gasped. A red haze of anger blinded her for an instant.
Then she launched herself forward at the naked girl, her nails unsheathed.
Marge was taken by surprise. Joanie got her hands on the firm meaty bulks of Marge's high, round breasts, and squeezed, and dug in. Marge screamed. Joanie scratched and shoved at the same time, and Marge toppled over backward, tripping on the bench in front of the row of lockers. She fell, landing heavily on her buttocks against the stone floor of the locker room, her back slamming into a locker door. For an instant she was out of sight, with her legs hooked over the bench, and the golden splendor of her femininity exposed as her thighs spread.
Then she pushed herself back up into view and drew her thighs together. She looked dazed and shaken. Red gouges gleamed in the milky pale skin of her bosom. She started to get to her feet.
Joanie slammed into her again.
This time Marge was readier, though still half off guard. As Joanie hit her, Marge reached out and grabbed, and caught hold of Joanie's hair. With her right hand Marge tugged at the black hair, while with her left she clawed at Joanie's gym suit.
There was the sound of fabric ripping.
A moment later Joanie's breasts were bare as the top of the gym suit came away. All around, girls were backing up to give the combatants plenty of room.
Marge continued to shred Joanie's suit while Joanie clawed at the blonde girl's naked body. The tatters of the gym suit fell away, and both girls were naked now, breasts leaping and bobbing as they closed with one another. Marge was stronger than she looked, Joanie realized. She was putting up one hell of a fight. Joanie howled as Marge's nails clawed trails of fire down her breasts. Joanie brought her knee up and slammed it hard between Marge's legs, and the blonde girl staggered and grunted back. Joanie came right after her.
They were out in the aisle, now, where there was plenty of room to fight. Marge seemed staggered by the blow to the groin, and Joanie followed up her advantage, punching and clawing. Marge backed up until she could back no further, and turned and lashed out at Joanie.
Both girls were shrieking, now. Stark naked, their breasts bloody, they circled one another, neither one wanting to take the offensive just then.
Then Marge came forward. She faked high and went low. Joanie felt excruciating agony as Marge's hand clamped into her loins. Dagger-like nails were digging into the most delicate tissues of Joanie's body. She let out an infernal howl and pounded with both fists, clubbing at the sensitive spheres of Marge's breasts.
Marge let go. She dropped back, rubbing her breasts. Joanie caught her breath and jumped forward. She smacked into Marge hard, driving her back a step or two.
Suddenly Marge slipped in a pool of sweat. She yelped and tumbled, her legs flying out from her. She landed with a hard thwack, buttock-first, on the cold floor.
Joanie jumped down on top of her.
Sensing impending triumph, Joanie found new strength. She sprawled down on top of Marge, firmly planting her buttocks on Marge's stomach and pinning her arms with her legs. Marge writhed but could not move.
Joanie reached down and put her hands on Marge's bare, sweat-shiny breasts.
"I ought to rip them right off you," Joanie said. "With my bare hands."
Marge glared defiance at her. She writhed, tried to throw Joanie off. But Joanie maintained her position astride the other girl.
She had never been this close to another naked girl before. It was funny, Joanie thought. There was pleasure in sitting on her, in feeling a girl's naked skin under her loins, in holding Marge's big breasts in her hands. Maybe these dykes had something after all.
Joanie said, "When I get through with you, Mike won't want even to look at you."
She let go of Marge's breasts and knotted both her hands in Marge's golden hair. She lifted Marge's head and slammed it down against the floor. Marge groaned. Joanie slammed her again.
"Break your goddamn skull, that's what I'll do!" Joanie cried.
She started to crack Marge's head against the floor a third time. But in desperation Marge heaved and this time managed to throw Joanie off her, enough to free one of her arms. Marge lashed out, and once again her nails raked Joanie's breasts. Joanie screamed and slapped Marge across the mouth, splitting her lip.
Marge kicked and bucked and scratched. Joanie's fury grew. She wanted to split Marge's skull, to mutilate her breasts, to get a hand between her legs and rip her up down there.
But she didn't get a chance.
The gym-teachers had finally heard the ruckus, and they were approaching, two steam-roller size women, a couple of dykes for sure.
"Teach coming!" someone yelled.
Joanie didn't want to risk disciplining. Fighting in the locker room got you five hours of detention, an hour a day all week. Joanie quickly got up.
Marge didn't move. She looked bloody and battered and dazed.
Joanie spat at her. Then, turning, she slipped away into the crowd of naked girls, and made her way to the shower room. Her body ached, and she knew she had taken some pretty deep scratches. But for everything she had taken, she had handed out three times as much in return to the blonde girl.
Joanie let the water course down full force. A song of triumph rose in her as she soaped herself, and washed the blood from her breasts. There couldn't be any doubt that she had been the victor. She had given Marge a taste of what would really happen to her if she continued to fool around with Mike.
Joanie grabbed her own bare breasts and hissed with pleasure. She felt good-heated up, sexually excited. The fight had been fun, and she still tingled from the pain she had inflicted on the other girl. If only she could have Mike right now, she thought. To celebrate. Well, she'd have Mike soon enough.
I really fixed that witch, Joanie thought. I really fixed her!
CHAPTER SIX
A Tike had heard about the locker room fracas before the end of the day. There was a highly efficient grapevine in the school.
At least fifty girls had witnessed the fight, and most of them were well aware of what it was all about. One of the girls who had watched was Artie Novik's girl, Jessie, and Jessie saw Artie in the corridor the next period, and told him about it, and Artie took the news straight to Mike Leonidas.
Mike scowled. He didn't like what he heard.
"That stinking lousy witch," he muttered. "Who the hell does she think she is? What kind of business she got pulling a trick like that?"
Cold fury swept over him. He saw Joanie's act clearly as an act of defiance of him. Joanie was trying to run his life for him, and that was one thing he wouldn't tolerate from anybody.
Joanie didn't have the guts to tell him to his face to get rid of Marge. So she was trying to be subtle about it, by undercutting him and going straight to Marge, attempting to scare her off. As subtle as a steamroller.
Joanie would have to be taught a lesson, Mike realized. A little discipline to put her in her place. Otherwise things could start to get out of hand all up and down the line, if people began to think that Mike Leonidas could be pushed around by a broad.
Mike said to Novik, "Go find Joanie. Tell her I want to see her after school today."
Novik started away. Mike called him back and added, "Don't let her think I'm sore at her, Artie. I don't want her even to know that I know about the locker room deal. You got that?"
He glanced at Dave Herst. "Go find Marge. Tell her I want to see her right now."
Mike waited while his emissaries went on their way. His mind clicked with plans for this evening, ways to get the situation back in hand.
Herst was the first to return, with Marge in tow. Marge looked like she was in bad shape. Her lips were puffy, and one of them was cut, and there were bruises and scratches all over her face. But there was the look of defiance in her eyes, of blazing anger and thirst for revenge.
"I hear you had a little fight today," Mike said.
"She japped me, Mike. Otherwise I would have cleaned up the floor with her. But she jumped me when I wasn't ready and I never could get the jump on her after she did that."
"She hurt you?"
"I'll live."
"I hear she banged you around pretty hard. And scratched up your boobs."
"No permanent scars," Marge said. "But I'm going to fix her for that, Mike. I'm going to get hold of her and let her-"
"No," Mike said. "Don't. Let me handle it."
"I don't get you."
"I'll punish her," Mike declared. "Tonight. There's gonna be a party at Artie Novik's place. His aunt's in the hospital and we can use the apartment. You let me take care of it and I'll fix Joanie at the party. I'll fix her good, believe me."
He sent Marge away. A couple of minutes later, Joanie appeared She, too, looked a little the worse for wear, though obviously she had come out of the fight in a lot better shape than Marge had.
Mike said, "What happened to you?"
"What do you mean, what happened?"
"You look all chewed up."
"Oh, i had a rough time in gym," Joanie said casually. "Some little snot nose witch tried to act up. I had to show her where to get off."
"Looks like she landed a few good ones," Mike said.
Joanie shrugged. "I gave her five for every one I took. I came out okay."
Mike nodded. "Glad to hear it. Just wanted to tell you that there's a party tonight. Artie Novik's place. Couples only You and me, Joanie."
"Sure. Mike. You and me." She grinned. "What time you picking me up?"
"I won't be able to pick you up," Mike said. "I got some important business before the party and I'll be coming over from the other side. So you meet me there, huh? It's only three blocks from your place, anyhow. At hall past eight, okay?"
"Sure, Mike. Anything you say."
"Yeah. That's the way I like it."
At quarter to eight that evening, Mike left his place and drove over to pick Marge up. She lived five blocks to the north of Artie Novik. This was cold weather, down to ten above. No night for walking around. It was a clear, crisp night, the stars hard and sharp.
He parked the car in front of Novik's place and they went up. It was an old brownstone house, well weathered with the years. Novik and his aunt lived there, in three and a half rooms. It wasn't a bad place to live. Once long ago the Noviks had had some money, back before the depression, and the furniture and draperies still bore traces of a generation-old moneyed grandeur long since faded.
About five couples were there already, drinking beer and dancing. Mike paid for the beer, out of the money his guys collected from the newcomers. Everybody chipped in to pay for the records. The system worked pretty well, with no beefs.
A lot of eyebrows were raised when people saw him walk in with Marge. He hadn't officially told anybody that he was changing chicks, and this was the first time he had appeared in public with Marge. But he didn't say anything, didn't make any formal announcements, just said, "This is Marge. Introduce yourselves to her when you get the chance."
He helped himself to a beer, and belted it away chug-a-lug.
Then he reached for Marge and pulled her out onto the floor for a dance.
They moved slowly, body pressed to body, cheek to cheek. Her full breasts were jammed right against him, and he liked that, and he also liked the feel of her thighs against his, her body tight to his. But he didn't think much about Marge at this particular moment. His mind was full of what he was going to do to Joanie.
The simplest, most obvious thing to do was to break up with her and put her through the mill. Tell her she had had it, and then stage a gang bang, with every guy in the room getting his turn on top of her. After which she would get the boot.
But that was too obvious. Besides, Mike didn't want to break up with Joanie, at least not for a while. For the time being, he wanted to keep both girls on his string. But they had to be kept in control. They couldn't be allowed to start running the show.
So a different tactic was called for-something that would humiliate Joanie, something that would break her proud spirit a little, but something that would fall short of a complete breakoff. Mike knew what he wanted to do. He couldn't wait for Joanie to show up.
She was right on time, eight thirty on the button. Artie Novik went to the door to admit her, and she came halfway into the room, still wearing her winter coat, her cheeks red from the cold, and she was smiling, and waving to everyone, and then she saw Marge sitting on the couch holding hands with Mike.
Joanie froze. An arctic chill spread through the room.
It was suddenly terribly, terribly silent. Mike's voice cut through the crackling noiselessness. "Hi, Joanie. Glad you could make it"
Joanie didn't answer.
Mike said, "Joanie, I want you to meet a friend of mine. Joanie, this is Marge. Marge, this is Joanie. Have the two of you met before?"
Joanie's lips were trembling. Mike could see the mixed hatred and fear in her eyes. Joanie's voice was chilly as she said, "No. I don't think we've met before this."
"You sure?" Mike asked.
"Sure I'm sure," Joanie said, trembling.
"You didn't meet her in the locker room of the gym today, by any chance?" Mike continued.
Joanie was silent a moment. Then she said, "So you know about that."
"Yes. I know. What makes you think I wouldn't know about it, you crud head? I know everything that goes on in that school."
Joanie's shoulders slumped for a moment, then went rigid as she recovered her old fire. "Okay, Mike. Okay. Let's stop playing games. I want it straight, in front of everybody. Am I still your chick or not?"
"Sure you're my chick, Joanie. You never stopped being my chick."
"And this blonde?"
"Marge is my chick too," Mike said in a cold voice. "You and her. The two of you. That's the way it's going to be from now on."
Joanie shook her head. "Uh-uh, Mike. It's either me or her. Not both."
"You telling me the way it's going to be?"
"I'm telling you how I want it to be."
"Pretty snotty these days, aren't you?" Mike asked.
"Well, I got news for you. I don't give a damn bow you want it to be. It's how I want it to be that counts And I say it's going to be you and Marge You don't have any voice in the deal. Not even a whimper, Joanie. How do you like that?"
Joanie shook her head. "It won't work. You can't make me go along with it."
"Sure I can, Joanie." Mike smiled, and it was a special smile, a smile that everybody in the room knew all too well. It was the smile that Mike Leonidas smiled when he was on the verge of making an enemy lick his boots. Mike leaned back and slipped his arm around Marge, and crossed his legs comfortably, and stared at the squirming, fidgeting Joanie, and finally broke the tense silence by saying, "Take your clothes off, Joanie."
Joanie's eyes widened. "Right here?"
"I don't mean for you to go home and do it."
"In front of everybody, Mike?"
"That's right, Joanie," Mike said easily, as though talking to a half-wit or a very young child. "In front of everybody. Come on, now. Don't keep us waiting."
"I won't do it."
"You will do it, Joanie. Let's go, now. Start peeling, sister."
Joanie shook her head, a quick wigwag that covered no more than two inches from side to side. Her voice became a husky whisper. "No, Mike. I don't want to do it. Not in front of the whole gang, for God's sake."
Mike's expression hardened. "You'll do it," he said. "Or I'll take my blade and cut your boobs off. So help-me I will. I'll cut 'em off and put iodine on the stumps. You got three to start stripping. Then I take out the knife and go to work."
"No, Mike."
"One."
"God, Mike, you "Two."
"Mike, I-"
He started to frame a T H with his lips. Joanie saw it, and abruptly her quivering hands went to her sweater, and she pulled it free of her jeans, tugged it up and over her head and let it drop at her feet. The proud hillocks of her breasts strained against the flimsy fabric of her pink bra. She stood there, face coloring violently, making no further move to undress.
Mike began to reach into his knife pocket.
Joanie paled and started to unzip her jeans.
She drew them down, and stepped out of them. A dead silence prevailed in the room. No one dared speak, no one dared interfere with the whim of Mike Leonidas. There was a sullen flame of anger in Joanie's eyes, but she was far too afraid of Mike to let that anger burst into open resistance now.
Her hands went to her bra. She fumbled for a moment, then unhooked it, and the cups dropped away, baring the magnificent firm peaks of her breasts. All around the room, the boys were fidgeting and shifting their bodies around in their seats. Until yesterday, it would have been worth a guy's life to see Joanie's bare breasts. Now here they were on public display, at Mike's direct command.
"The panties," Mike said inexorably.
Down they came, and now nothing but a pair of white bobby-sox stood between Joanie and absolute nudity. Mike didn't bother about the bobby-sox. As far as he was concerned, Joanie was naked enough to suit him.
He sat there a moment, eyeing her, taking in the heavy mounds of her breasts and the lushness of her thighs and the firm curves of her buttocks, all exposed to everyone's glance. Joanie's face was on fire, but she made no attempt to cover her nakedness with her hands. She stood there meekly undergoing her humiliation and waiting for it to end.
Mike rose now. He walked toward her.
His hands went to his waist, and he calmly drew the leather belt from his chinos.
He said quietly, "Get down on the floor. On your hands and knees, like an animal."
"Mike-"
"Go on!" he snarled.
Joanie seemed to shrink in fear. She hunkered down and tipped her back up. The position drew the globes of her buttocks taut and brought them up in a perfect target position. Mike eyed the pale fleshy globes, studied the beauty between them a moment.
Then he raised the belt.
And brought it down.
It cracked smartly across both cheeks of her buttocks at once, and Joanie made a little gasping sound of pain. Mike saw the pale line leap up across the flesh, and almost immediately turn an angry red as blood flooded into the injured stripe.
He brought the belt down again.
This time the whip curled around the flesh of the left buttock alone, cutting a red line at a diagonal to the first one. The meaty cheek quivered as it was struck, and again Joanie gasped. Mike smiled. He felt the blood coursing more rapidly through his body. His heart was pumping furiously.
He struck again.
And again.
And again.
The third stroke caught her across the backs of her thighs, just below the buttocks. The fourth came down on the small of her back. The fifth was carefully aimed, right down between her buttocks, the tip of the belt curling into her to send a blazing flick of agony to the most sensitive part of her body.
Sweat rolled down Mike's body, now. His breath came in harsh bursts.
He drew the whip up and sent it slicing around her mid-section, across both of her heavy breasts as they dangled toward the floor. Joanie howled in agony and fell over, looking up at him wildly.
"Please, Mike! No more! No more!"
"I'll show you not to mess around," he grunted. He cocked his arm again and let her have it across the front of her thighs as she sat there. She made a half-roll, exposing one hip, and he whipped that, and then as she turned he caught her buttocks again, and then her thighs from the rear.
She tried to hide from him, but there was no place to hide. She curled up into a ball, knees drawn against her breasts, hands clasped behind her head, but that still left plenty of skin exposed, and Mike worked it over with grim enthusiasm. Again and again the belt rained down, leaving red stripes on her arms, on her neck, on her cheeks, her buttocks, her thighs, her belly. The scream ing, frantic girl kicked and begged, but Mike was merciless. A savage excitement gripped him.
Her body was covered with belt-marks, now. Some of the earlier ones had changed from red to an ugly, mottled purplish-blue. There were a few driblets of blood where repeated whipping had broken right through the skin.
Now Joanie wasn't even trying to defend herself. She lay stretched out flat on her face, her head in her arms. Great sobs of pain and humiliation racked her body convulsively every second. Her reddened buttocks were exposed, and Mike raised the belt and brought it down, and raised it, and brought it down.
Then he paused and looked around.
Looked at the horror-stricken faces all around.
He knew he had them buffaloed. They had all seen plenty of cruelty and violence, but they had never seen anything quite like this-never seen the gang boss ordering his own broad to strip to the buff in public, and then smashing her around with his belt.
The only sounds in the room were Mike's harsh breathing and Joanie's muffled sobs. Mike looked down at the girl who lay naked and quivering on the floor. He lifted one foot and prodded the toe gently into the flesh of her nearest buttock.
"You had enough?" he asked her.
She didn't answer. She just continued to sob hysterically.
"You want some more, then? I'll give you more if you want it, Joanie."
"No-please don't-"
It wasn't Joanie who had spoken. Joanie still lay in a huddled heap. It was Marge.
Mike turned around. Marge was chalk-white, stony-faced on the couch, her eyes wide with shock. She said, "Don't beat her any more, Mike. Please. You'll cripple her. You might even kill her."
Mike blinked. "I thought you wanted to see her get taken care of," he said.
"She's had enough," Marge said. "She doesn't deserve all this. Please, Mike. Do me a favor. Let her alone, Mike."
Mike shoved Joanie with his toe again. "You hear that?" he asked. "You tried to bang her brains out, and here she is asking me to be nice to you. How do you like that? Come on, turn your head, look up at me when I talk to you!"
Joanie looked up. She seemed dazed, half in a state of shock. There was no anger left in her eyes now, not a shred of defiance.
"Well?" Mike said. "You figure you know your place now, Joanie?"
"Y-yes, Mike." Her voice was a hoarse croak.
"You gonna lay down the law to me any more?"
"No, Mike."
"Tell me who my chick is, Joanie."
"Anybody you say, Mike."
"Marge is my chick. Right?"
"Yes. Marge is your chick."
"And so are you. You and Marge are both my chicks."
"Me and Marge are both your chicks," Joanie murmured faintly.
"And there won't be any jealousy between you. No fighting, no arguing, no clawing behind my back. You'll be pals."
"Yeah, Mike. We'll be pals."
Mike smiled. The point had been made, the lesson driven home. He glanced at the beaten, weary, naked girl on the floor at his feet. Then he smiled in triumph, savoring in his memory the sensation of what it had been like to bring down the whip against bare, quivering female flesh.
He turned.
"All right, the rest of you," he boomed. "Clear out! The party's over! You saw all I wanted you to see!"
CHAPTER SEVEN
THEY LEFT.
All but Artie Novik and his girl Jessie, of course. This was Artie's own home, after all, and Mike couldn't very well turn him out into the winter night. Marge and Joanie stayed too. But the rest left. They filed out in silence, still stunned by the fury and violence that they had seen unleashed on Joanie's naked body.
When the others were gone, Mike said to Novik, "You and Jessie take the bedroom, leave me the living room. Let's keep out of each other's way."
"Anything you say, Mike."
Novik and Jessie disappeared into the bedroom and closed the door. Mike turned to Joanie, who, still naked, was sitting on the couch, her head lolling back, her eyes groggy "Give her a drink," Mike commanded. "Novik keeps some hard liquor in that cabinet over there."
Obediently, Marge went to the sideboard and poured a tall shot of whiskey. Mike took it from her, and put it to Joanie's lips.
Joanie seemed to come around a little after the drink. She focused her eyes, stared at Mike as though from a great distance, shivered a little.
"How you feeling?" Mike asked her.
"I hurt."
"Yeah. I guess you do. But you're still my chick, Joanie. Despite what I did to you. You understand that, don't you?"
Joanie nodded. But she didn't really seem to understand.
Mike turned to Marge and said, "Let's give her a shower. It'll bring her around, wake her up. Wash the blood off her some. Come on. Take your clothes off."
He began to undress, and a moment later Marge did too. Soon all three of them were naked in the living room. Mike glanced at the two naked girls, the blonde and the brunette. They might almost be sisters, from the neck down. They were the same height, they both had the same high, heavy, thrusting breasts, the same lush fullness of hip and buttocks. Joanie was darker of complexion, and weighed maybe eight or ten pounds more than Marge, and didn't quite have Marge's radiant sheen of skin, but otherwise the two girls had bodies built to the same scale.
Both girls presented a sorry sight just now, though. Their locker room encounter had left them both scratched and bruised, and Joanie was further battered from the whipping. Neither girl looked exactly sleek right now. But none of the damage would be permanent, Mike knew, except for the damage he had done to Joanie's soul.
He and Marge lifted Joanie and they marched her into the bathroom. Mike held her while Marge turned on the water, medium cold. Then the three of them got under.
The cool water was brisk and bracing. Joanie seemed to revive the moment the cascades descended on her. Her head lifted, and she put her body to the water and let it stream down over her bruised breasts and beaten buttocks.
She was in better shape when they got out of the shower. All three of them toweled dry together. Mike felt a brand new kind of pleasure as both girls bustled around him, their bodies wet and soft, the tips of their breasts touching him from time to time.
They returned to the living room, the three of them naked. Mike had Joanie lie down on the floor, where such a short while ago he had beaten her so cruelly. She stretched out, trying to relax.
He settled down next to her.
"You too," he said to Marge. "Both of you down here with me."
His hand stole over Joanie's buttocks, caressing diem, feeling the welts and swellings that marred the perfection of those twin heavy globes of flesh. His other band reached for and found Marge's breasts, and he caught them, held, squeezed.
While one hand wandered over Joanie's legs, the other was doing the same to Marge. Soon both girls were gasping in excitement. The strangeness of the combination, the crackling air of tension, the recent sadistic display, all seemed to enhance their desires and bring them easily to a pitch of arousal, even Joanie.
Mike arranged his body to fit the curve of Joanie's back and buttocks. Then he thrust forward experi mentally, and found her warm and ready for him. He took her that way, his belly and thighs pressing against the soft cushions of her bottom, her body moving and thrusting in rhythm with his, and soon she was breathing hard and quivering in the first pulses of fulfillment.
Meanwhile Marge was not being neglected. He had pulled her over next to him, and his body was pivoted in a half-twist so that while his lower half faced Joanie, his upper half faced Marge. He had one of Marge's breasts in his mouth, and he was sucking on the nipple, drawing on it, feeling the little flesh nub go hard against his tongue, and with his hands he was exploring the essence of her, touching her, arousing her.
Suddenly Joanie went spiraling off to culmination, her tortured nervous system easily pushed over that brink, and Mike whipped his still unfulfilled body away from hers.
He turned toward Marge.
He speared into her.
Marge received him with a gasp and a groan. Mike rose above her, pressing down into her, flattening her on the carpet, and his pistoning, driving hips moved in urgent rapid thrusts, each jab sending a new eddy of ecstasy through her.
Joanie, on her part, came upon him from behind and clung to him, adding her weight to the thrusts. The hard tips of her breasts pressed into Mike's back, and he could feel her thighs against his backside, and he reached around, holding her, and the three of them writhed and reeled on the floor.
Then Marge was whimpering and throbbing in the wild palpitations of her completion, and Mike felt Joanie's hand working between their bodies to get in on the act, and his legs became entangled with hers and with Marge's, so that to an observer from another planet it would have seemed as though some weird twelve-limbed creature with three heads was writhing in hideous agony on the floor.
Mike moved faster as the frenzy came upon him.
Faster.
Faster yet.
Then came the explosion, and it was more violent than anything he had ever experienced before. It was the culmination of all the potential that had been building up in him, the discharge of the passions that had piled up while he was whipping the naked Joanie. the outflow of the excitement of having not one but two nude girls writhing in ecstasy with him.
The jolt came, and it knocked him back on his ears.
He went through it to the end, his body linked to Marge's but also entangled with Joanie's, and then came the final quiver, the finish.
He let out his breath in a long sigh of relief and smiled happily. This was the life, he thought. This was really great.
He leaned back and stretched out, with his head pillowed against Joanie's breasts and his feet in Marge's lap. He smiled.
"Well?" he said. "How was it?"
"It was the greatest," Marge said.
He looked at Joanie. Joanie smiled faintly. "It was terrific," she murmured. "I wish I had only known how great it could be. I was a damned idiot."
"Well, we can forgive all that," Mike said generously. "You goofed up, and you paid for it, and that's that.
We'll have a ball together, the three of us. A real ball." He reached up, and plucked at Joanie's breasts, filling his hands with them, and squeezed. At the same time his toes traced a tickling line across Marge's lean belly. Marge laughed in pleasure.
Mike said, "You know what I'd like now? I'd like to sit here and watch the two of you put on a show for me. You don't mind doing a dyke routine for me, do you? Do you, now?"
The two girls exchanged glances. But neither one looked at Mike, neither one entered any note of protest. They had both seen all too clearly, and one had vividly experienced, what happened to girls who tried to thwart Mike Leonidas. They didn't need any more convincing.
If Mike wanted them to do a dyke routine for him, they would do a dyke routine.
If Mike wanted them to stand on their heads and let him stuff nickels into them, they would stand on their heads and let him stuff nickels.
Whatever Mike wanted, Mike was going to get. Because Mike was the boss, and nobody cared to dispute that point, not any more.
"You want us to do it right now?" Marge asked.
"Why not?" Mike said.
He rose and went over to the couch to have himself a ringside seat. He stretched out naked, enjoying the feel of the velvety couch against his skin, and propped his head up on his fist, leaning on his elbow.
He waited.
Marge and Joanie looked tense and uncertain. They moved toward each other on the floor, but they seemed inhibited, unsure of what they were supposed to do. For almost a minute nothing happened.
"Go on, Joanie," Mike said. "Don't be bashful. Reach out and grab hold of her boobs. Just like you did in the locker room. Only this time you aren't doing it for blood, that's the difference."
Joanie put one hand tentatively forward. It closed around Marge's left breast, and the rosy nub of the nipple peeped through. Mike's breath began to come a little faster. This was going to be a good kick, he thought. The kick of balling got to be kind of simple-minded and boring after a while, but then there were all these other kicks, the special one, the offbeat ones. The kick of whipping a naked girl and watching her buttocks go red as the belt slashed down again and again. The kick of balling two girls at once. The kick of lying here like the king of Siam and watching two stacked chicks balling each other.
There were plenty of other kicks along those lines too, Mike thought.
And he figured on getting around to all of them, one at a time.
Now he watched.
Joanie had both her hands on Marge's breasts, now. Kneading the flesh. Rolling it around a little. Squeezing, cupping.
Marge's face was flushed, and her lips were drooping sexily open. She seemed to be heating up again. She was getting into the spirit of the thing now.
With that cat-like grace of hers, Marge delicately slid her knee between Joanie's thighs. Joanie immediately clamped tight around it, and started to slide herself up and down, rubbing, stimulating herself. Color flooded to Joanie's face, and her eyes became little slits of desire.
Joanie reached around and grabbed Marge's behind. Marge had her hands on Joanie's breasts, now. They lay side by side, on the floor, bodies starting to piston in steady rhythms of sensuality.
"Go ahead," Mike urged. "Kiss her boobs. Like the dykes do. Go!"
Joanie nodded. She lifted Marge's big breasts, one at a time, and put them to her mouth, opening wide, taking as much of each fleshy globe into her mouth as was possible, sucking, drawing, pulling. Marge gasped and gripped Joanie's breasts more tightly. The leg that was wedged in Joanie's started to move, back and forth, back and forth, a steady, pulsing friction.
There was a slight shift on the floor, and now Joanie had her hand at Marge's legs, and the fingers were moving, moving, moving all the time. Both girls were moaning now. Watching, Mike felt new excitement coursing through him. He looked down at himself and saw the visible sign of his fascination. There was the throbbing in him, and he was tempted to get up and throw himself on the two intertwined girls and once again have them both, but he resisted, and lay back, and watched.
And watched some more.
Marge and Joanie were beyond the point where they needed any coaching or urging from him. They were both in the thick of it now, carried away by the strange and perverse sensations they were feeling.
Body churned against softly feminine body. Hardened breast-tip pressed against hardened breast-tip. The belly fire was upon them both, now, the thigh-lust, and they knew instinctively what to do.
Joanie had her head down between Marge's thighs, now. Joanie's jet-black hair contrasted strongly with the pink and gold of Marge's body, like a sooty stain on a field of cloth of gold. Marge had pivoted around so she faced the other way, and now she, too, dove for the home of all erotic sensation. Her golden-crowned head burrowed into the tawny darkness of Joanie.
Both girls were covered with sweat, now. Their skins were shiny, their bodies heaving, their breasts bobbing and leaping around. Mike's eyes were popping. And now down below in him there was an insistent pounding, a furious ache that would not be denied, but which he fought back in savage self-discipline.
He continued to watch.
The girls had taken a new position, now. Marge was on the bottom, with Joanie atop her, and they were moving, just like a normal couple. There was the pistoning of the hips, the steady friction, the thrust and the counterthrust.
Mike's throat went bone-dry. His heart thundered in his chest.
Joanie's buttocks kept arching upward, then thrusting down. Below her, Marge had her knees in the air, so Mike could look down the undersides of her thighs, down into the valley of love itself, where Joanie's tawny body lay. He wondered what the two girls were feeling, whether it was better for them this way than with a man, or whether the missing organ made an all-important difference. He couldn't tell. They seemed to be having a fine time just the two of them.
They were panting, now. And making hoarse animal-like cries.
Then Marge began to curse. It was weird to listen to her. A string of four-letter words came from her lovely lips, totally unconnected words, simply a spew of filth. It was as though a worker with a pickaxe had unexpectedly tapped a sewer line, and the cess was coming up in a steady stream. She was talking in a high-pitched voice that hardly sounded like her own, a mechanical zombi-like voice. Obviously she had no conscious control over what she was doing, but was simply lying there with all of her inhibitions disconnected, giving vent to anything that flowed through her dazzled brain.
And Joanie, on top of her, worked away like a galley slave, thrusting and thrusting again.
At last Mike could not stand to watch any longer. He was not cut out to be a spectator. The compulsion gripped him. He rose from the couch.
For a moment he stood over the two grappling girls. He looked down and saw Marge's face, distorted, swollen with lust. It was a strange sight. Her eyes were open, but they weren't focused on anything. She was staring glassily at the ceiling like the victim of a convulsion, and the obscenities were still streaming from her lips, and her body was jerking and heaving in the throes of what must have been a truly monu mental finish.
Mike threw himself down on them.
He landed on Joanie's back and buttocks just as she was completing an up-stroke, and as she rose he pressed down, seeking a harbor and finding it. He knifed into her as easily as a blade cuts into butter, and she shivered a little as she felt him take her from above, and then she swung down again, grinding against the half-conscious, lust-dazed Marge underneath, who was still gasping out her ecstasy.
For one wild and wonderful moment all three of them moved in the same rhythm. Then Marge reached the absolute peak of her endurance and lay back limply, and Joan rolled off her and twisted her body around, pressing herself against Mike, enfolding him, imprisoning him, engulfing him.
He held tight to her.
He hung on while she made it.
Then she was right at the top, and he was still with her, and he refused to finish it, but with iron control held on. Joanie opened her eyes for a moment, and Mike looked at them and saw the wildness in them, and he knew that he had driven both these girls into a frenzy that might never be matched.
He frantically drove into her again.
Her body jerked as though she had just been electrocuted. She let out a banshee wail of mingled pleasure and agony, and her back arched high, high off the floor, and her hips moved in a mile-a-minute pace, and Mike let himself be swept away by the fervor of it all.
The climax hit him in a series of hammer blows that drained the strength from him. He held tight, feeling the firm thighs locked around his hips, and filled her body with his lust, and then it was over, and he had to fight to keep his breath, and he knew that this was it, the utmost in kicks.
Nobody moved for a long time after it had ended.
The three of them lay limply, uselessly on the floor, like debris washed up by the sea. Now and again Mike would stir, and reach out his hand to cup it around a firm steep breast, or let it trail across a flat taut belly, or touch a curving satiny buttock. But the desire was burned out of him now, and his batteries would need a good charging before he was ready to go again.
Time passed. He didn't know how much. It may have been only ten minutes, or it may have been two hours, or two months. In the strange trancelike state he had attained, it was impossible to have any real perception of the passage of time.
Finally he rose. He had never felt so tranquil in his life, so free of nervous tension. Naked, he stood in the middle of the room, looking down at his two mistresses. They were both fast asleep. Marge lay curled on her side, with her thumb in her mouth and her knees drawn up to her breasts, like a baby in the cradle, except that no cradle ever saw a baby with breasts like those. Joanie was in a less innocent position. She lay sluttishly sprawled on her back, with her legs wide apart as though inviting all comers.
Mike tiptoed over them and went to the John for a cold drink of water. Then he pushed open the bedroom door and looked in.
Novik and Jessie were also fast asleep, and also naked. The same strange peace had descended over them too. Mike stood there, looking at Jessie's slim flanks and small breasts. She was a tall, good-looking girl, but very slender. He had never seen her naked before, and now he could look all she wanted, because there she was on her back with everything she had showing.
But he didn't care very much, now. He looked at her, just out of curiosity, and decided that she was a good-looking girl, though it was a pity she didn't have bigger boobs. That was all. After the sensational activities he'd just been going through with Marge and Joanie, he didn't have much interest in naked girls, for the time being.
He turned and prodded the two girls awake. "Come on," he said "It's late. Get your clothes on and I'll take you both home."
CHAPTER EIGHT
It was past four in the morning when Mike finally got to bed, and he was dead tired. It had been quite a workout. Quite.
But he was pleased with the way everything had gone. Not only had he had some very special kicks, but he had solved a discipline problem with Joanie. He didn't think she'd give him any more trouble now. She would fall right in line with the new setup. He had shown her in the most emphatic way possible that she had nothing to gain and everything to lose by resisting. Either she could share him with Marge, or she could pull out altogether-and he was pretty sure she'd go along with the sharing arrangement. Especially after the way the three of them had been balling tonight.
That left Mike with two main projects to take care of now. Project Number One was to get hold of the new teacher, Garvey, and teach him not to go around grabbing Mike Leonidas by the shoulder. Project Number Two was to complete his revenge on Lou Rickhardt by having some fun with Rickhardt's kid sister.
As he closed his eyes. Mike made a mental note to get going on those two projects right away.
He slept late. He didn't even consider getting up when the alarm went off. He simply reached over and popped the button in, and slept on.
When he finally got up, it was past ten o'clock. He had had six hours of sleep, which was enough to keep him alert, and he had also managed to cut his first two classes of the morning, which didn't trouble him at all. He washed up, had a cup of coffee, and headed for school without bothering to shave.
It was the middle of the third period when he showed up. He sauntered into his third period class without showing any sign that he knew he was half an hour late, and took his seat. The teacher stared at him.
Mike grinned. "Hi, Teach," he said. "Did I miss anything?"
The teacher looked away without comment. Smart teachers didn't answer back when Mike Leonidas piped up with a remark. It was safer just to pretend he hadn't said anything.
The hour ticked away, and then it was lunchtime. Mike strolled down to the cafeteria, picked out a good-sized meal-his appetite was ferocious after last night-and settled down at his customary bench. One by one, the members of his gang came along to join him. Mike noticed a kind of reserve about them today, a look almost of awe.
He knew why. It had to do with last night, with the way he had whipped Joanie, had whipped her naked in front of all of them. They were afraid of him now, even more, afraid than they had been before.
Maybe they think I'm not right in the head, Mike thought. Maybe they think only a crazy man would have pulled a stunt like that Well, maybe they're right, a little. But to hell with what they think. I'm the boss, and I take my kicks any way I feel like.
Mike said, "Anybody seen that creep Rickhardt yet today?"
Johnny Burke shook his head. "He's still absent, Mike."
"Too chicken to come in, I guess."
"I heard somebody say he was in the hospital," Longinotti put in. "I guess we did a better job on him than we thought. Broke a couple ribs or something."
Mike shrugged. "That'll show him what's what. Check on that hospital story, will you? I want to know. I don't like to have to guess about things."
"Sure, Mike."
Mike hunched forward and said, "We got two jobs on our hands now. One I told you about the other day. The business of roughing up Garvey. I think we'll do that tomorrow after school. You all still with me?"
His eyes flicked from man to man, extorting a nod from each of them.
"Good," Mike said. "Now the project for today. Rickhardt's sister. We're gonna catch her after school and have ourselves a gangbang."
There was silence at the table. Mike studied the faces ringing his.
Dave Herst said, "She's kinda young, Mike. I saw her, and she looks like a kid. I-"
"You telling me maybe we shouldn't do it?" Mike asked in a deceptively gentle voice.
Herst bit his lip. "No, Mike. I'm not saying we shouldn't."
"Okay, then. We will. We'll pick her up when school lets out and give it to her."
"Where do we take her?" Novik asked. "Now that the clubhouse burned down-"
"Well, there's your place," Mike said evenly.
Novik's eyebrows raised. "Hey, look, Mike, you want to have a party there, that's one thing, but a gangbang, well, Jesus, if the cops heard her screaming or anything, you know, it could be pretty bad."
Mike stared stonily at him. "It would be pretty bad wherever they happened to catch us. It's our business not to get caught, Novik. And we've gotta have a place to do it. You're all alone over there, no parents, no relatives to get in the way. Your place is the best one. Unless you think we ought to do it right out in the open. Corner of Madison and State, maybe? We could charge admission, half a buck to see the rape-"
Novik squirmed. He was obviously stunned by the thought of making his apartment the scene of a mass rape. But he didn't have much choice. Mike was looking straight at him, and Mike didn't like to take no for an answer.
There was a long, sticky silence. Then Novik shrugged and looked down at the table and said, "Yeah, Mike. Okay. If you say so."
"I say so."
It was settled, then. The gangbang would be held at Novik's place.
Mike finished his goulash and gulped down his milk, and cleared out of the cafeteria, taking his band of satellites along with him. He hated the cafeteria. It was an ugly place, with peeling, flaking brown paint hanging from the walls, and bare pipes running across the ceiling. Since last year, the cafeterias at George Morris Vocational had been segregated-not by color, but by sex. The girls now had their own cafeteria over at the other side of the building.
Mike didn't like that much. You used to be able to sit with your chick at the table, and kid around at lunch time. But there was too much kidding around, it seemed. And a lot of horseplay. And even some sex That was the thing that put a finish to the arrangement the day that somebody in the board of education found out that girls were getting boffed right in the cafeteria at lunchtime every day.
Of course, it was done in a sneaky way, so that the teacher who monitored the place wouldn't know what was going on. The girls all had to wear skirts to school, naturally, but there was nothing in the rules that said in so many words that they had to wear panties under the skirts. So if a girl came to school with nothing on under her skirt, and she sat down on the same bench with a fellow and sat against his lap, and flounced her skirt out in the right way, why, all kinds of interesting things could happen right at the table without attracting any attention at all. All a fellow had to do was unzip and slip against her, and there they were.
So for a while the lunchroom at George Morris Vocational was the liveliest place anyone could imagine, and all the action taking place out of sight.
And then the inspector came.
Inspectors were always coming to look at the school and make sure that it hadn't been burned down by the pupils, and that the windows were still mostly there and that no murders were taking place in the classrooms. Most of the inspectors were kindly old ginks who had grown incompetent as teachers, and who were given administrative jobs of this sort to keep them alive and busy until they reached retirement age and could grab their pensions and head for Florida.
This particular inspector was a little man of about 55, bald except for a fringe of white hair around his ears. He looked like something out of a storybook, with his pink cheeks and his rimless glasses and his little bow-tie. He came into the lunchroom just to survey the place, and, though he wasn't aware of it as he entered, at least twenty-five fine young couples, pride of the nation's youth, were busily engaged in the act of carnal communion while pretending to shovel down the goulash.
The inspector inspected. He was a little startled to see girls sitting on some of the fellows' laps in the lunchroom, but he figured it was a harmless pastime, and one which in any event wasn't worth preventing. When you have murder, extortion, and rape taking place as common occurrences in a school, you don't waste much effort trying to prevent things like hand-holding and lap-sitting.
But one of the girls in the lunchroom was careless that day, and her carelessness put an end to a good deal. She hadn't arranged her skirt just so. She had let it bunch up at one side, and it had ridden up her thigh a good ways, and Oh, my!
The little creepy-peepy inspector stood there and got beet-red from the top of his bald head down to his toes. He stared sideways at the girl and the boy, and saw a substantial amount of thigh and even some bare buttock showing, and watched the way the girl was subtly moving around against the boy's lap, and observed certain surreptitious motions of the boy's lower body as he sat there and Oh. my!
The inspector came to the sudden and disturbing conclusion that these-these children-were actually and literally-doing it-it!-right here in the lunchroom!
The inspector stood there and got a good look. There was no doubt at all, none in the world. The girl had nothing on under her skirt, and she had opened the boys clothing as she sat down, and he-and she-and they Oh, my!
So when he had a good eyeful, the inspector turned and got out of there, and when he filed his report he strongly urged segregation of the students by sexes in the lunchroom. The principal of the school wanted to know why And the inspector told him, in detail, blushing all the while, but spelling the whole thing out beyond any possibility of misunderstanding.
The principal himself went down to the cafeteria to take a look.
He studied closely this phenomenon of lap-sitting, which nobody had taken seriously until then.
He came upstairs and muttered, "I'll be damned, but the little buggers are doing it!"
And the next day, it was duly announced that one of the auxiliary gyms would be converted into a girl's cafeteria, and there would be no more coeducational lunchroom sessions henceforward.
Which, from Mike's point of view, put an end to one of the chief joys of a day at school. But there was nothing he could do about it. Some things in the school were outside his jurisdiction, and this was one of them.
Of course, there were plenty of places you could take a girl if you wanted to bang her during school hours. The lunchroom had simply been a minor and amusing business, notable for its public aspects. But there were various rooms on the fourth floor of the building, architect's mistakes, little left-over rooms not much bigger than broom closets, which weren't used for anything. If you didn't mind the dust, you could always take a girl up there. Mike did it frequently. You had to do it standing up, but that was okay. The fellow leaned against the door to keep anyone else from coming in, and the girl pulled up her skirt and opened her legs, and away you went.
Then, too, there were the washrooms. You could go into one of the girls' Johns, or bring a girl into a boys' room, and let her have it in one of the toilet cubicles. A lot of that went on too.
Mike smiled as he remembered the last gangbang he had been involved in. That had taken place in the girls' john on the third floor, just opposite the home economics auditorium.
The girl was a babe named Marie, a tall blonde, a six-footer with a real body. Dave Herst had been trying to make her all term, but she was giving him a hard time. Not that she was a virgin or anything. Plenty of guys in the school had been in her. But she had taken a notion not to let Dave score. It was a game with her. She felt like being a tease with him.
It was driving Herst out of his mind. They would go out on a date, and he would park his car on some dark street and turn to her, and take her bra off and put his hands on those huge boobs of hers and play with them, and then she'd let him get his hand under her panties and wiggle it around there for a while.
And then, just when he was snorting like a stallion and starting to unzip his pants, she'd say, "I think it's time to go home, Dave." And back would go the panties, and back would go the bra, and poor Dave would have to drive her home and then make love to his hand.
He was a wreck after a month of this treatment. His nerves were shot. Mike noticed it, and he was puzzled about it, and finally said, "What the hell's with you, anyway? You on H or something? Shaking like a goddamn junkie."
"It's my nerves," Herst said.
Mike prodded an explanation out of him. When he heard, he was amazed, because Herst was one of the toughest guys he knew, and he couldn't imagine Dave putting up with this kind of stuff from any broad.
Mike said in astonishment, "Why don't you just push her over next time you've got her in the car? If she won't come across, hell, just force her."
Herst shook his head. "I don't want to do that. That's admitting defeat. I want to make her the right way, not to force her."
"Suit yourself," Mike told him.
Herst gave it one more try. But Marie was even more bitchy than usual that night-she let him get right within scoring distance, and then slammed down the gate. Herst was furious. He went home with every nerve in his body jangling, and the next day he said to Mike, "You're right. The way I'm going to get her is if I rape her."
"Yeah," Mike said. "I figured you'd catch on sooner or later."
So that was how they had the gangbang.
It was all very carefully organized. Eight guys were chosen for it-Mike, Burke, Herst, Novik, Longinotti, Pappas, and a couple of others, all trustworthy. Then was just a matter of following Marie around in school that day, shadowing her and waiting for her to go into the john.
She had a pretty strong bladder, it seemed, because it wasn't until the lunch break that she had to go. She went into a john on the third floor after her home economics class. Herst, who was shadowing her, gave a quick whistle, and the next minute there were eight guys in the john there with her.
There were also a couple of innocent bystanders two girls on the pot who were a little startled, to put it mildly, to see eight husky guys come barging in. They turned bright red and pulled their skirts down, and Mike told them to get their panties on and clear out.
Marie stayed.
And the gangbang began.
Marie knew what was going to happen, all right. She backed up against the wall of the john, planted herself against the cold tiles, and began to kick. Anyone who came near her got a sharp-pointed toe aimed right where he lived.
For a couple of minutes she managed to hold every body off, and she got in some pretty wicked kicks. Then the guys moved in on her. Pappas came angling in on her, with that sharp-eyed timing of his, and then she kicked at him he caught her foot and tugged. The shoe came off and Marie went toppling.
She landed on her butt, hard, and sat there dazed for half a second. Three guys jumped her After that she was helpless. Longinotti got her right leg and held it, and Novik got the left leg, and Pappas held one of her arms, and Burke held the other one.
And Dave Herst, smiling like a cat about to gobble up a canary, stepped between her spread legs and ripped her panties off.
Marie lay there helpless as her own panties were stuffed in her mouth as a gag. Then Dave Herst looked over his shoulder at Mike. This was a tricky moment. By rights, Mike, as the boss of the gang, had first crack at Marie. But Mike grinned. He could wait, this time.
He said, "This is your party, Dave. Go ahead and take firsties."
Dave chuckled. He looked down at the big, heavy-breasted girl on the bathroom floor, and laughed in her face. She sat there gagged but furious, her eyes wide with hatred, her skirt pushed up over her hips and everything below her waist exposed to view.
Dave unzipped.
He got down on her.
Then, with brutal impatience, he took her.
It was a fitting revenge for all the teasing he had taken at her expense. He sworded into her in a way that made her wince with pain, and he moved with fierce thrusting jabs that ploughed the tender flesh of her ruthlessly.
After a couple of minutes Mike said laughingly, "How is she, Dave? Is she cherry?"
"She's like a garage, the goddamn tease."
"Give it to her good, man."
Dave gave it to her good. He banged away for five minutes or so, and then took his pleasure from her, and rose from her. Marie looked kind of dazed with the pain, though her eyes still were alive with hate.
Mike stepped forward for his turn.
He was less brutal than Dave had been, because he had no personal grudge against Marie. He simply took her and moved with her and reached his fulfillment and left. He wasn't terribly interested one way or the other. It was just a quick moment of pleasure for him, of no importance in the overall scheme of his life.
Then he leaned against the wall and watched while the others had their turns. One, two, three, four, five, six, and finally Dave Herst again, putting the finishing touches on the gangbang.
by this time Marie was in pretty sad shape. Not only was she suffering a lot of pain, but her sex impulses were popping like crazy, only nobody had stayed with her long enough to fulfill her properly. That was probably the crudest part of the whole routine, Mike thought.
When it was over, he walked over to the prostrate girl and took out his switchblade. He flicked the knife out and pressed the tip against the huge swell of Marie's left breast, pushing it so the firm flesh yielded a little to the steely insistence of the blade.
"You aren't going to say a word about this to anyone," Mike told her. "You don't know any of us, and you aren't going to make a complaint. Not unless you want to 'ose these. I'll cut your boobs right off you, girlie. You understand me? Am I getting through to you or not?"
He got through. Marie didn't say a word. At least, there were no official repercussions to the gangbang. Marie was out of school for a few days, and when she came back she was a sullen, silent girl who made it her business to keep well out of the way of Mike Leonidas' bunch. At the end of the term she dropped out of school, and rumors said she had gotten pregnant, and Mike often wondered whether it had happened that day in the third floor washroom.
Well, this was going to be a slightly different kind of gangbang, Mike thought. Because Marie had been simply a pig. This other girl, this Rickhardt girl, was supposed to be still a virgin. That could be very interesting. That could be the source of some pretty potent kicks.
CHAPTER NINE
FIVE MINUTES BEFORE THE BELL SOUNDED to end classes for the day, Mike Leonidas got up and walked out of his American History class The teacher looked at him quizzically as he marched out, but made no attempt to prevent him from leaving the room.
Mike wasn't particularly interested in the story of the Spanish-American War, but that wasn't the reason why he was leaving the class early He left early because he had to get around to the other side of the building, to the girls' exit, before the rush started.
He found some of the guys already there, waiting for him-Burke and Pappas, and a moment later Longinotti, Herst, and Novik. The whole tribe was gathering, Mike's entire front line of henchmen.
Mike said, pointing at Longinotti, "Phil, you're the contact man. You go up to her and tell her you got something important to tell her about her brother Say you're a close friend of his. Act like you mean it. Then pull her aside. We'll take care of all the rest of the operation after that All you guys got handkerchiefs? If she sees faces, we're cooked."
"What about seeing my face?" Longinotti asked.
Mike laughed. "Don't worry about that. You'll wear a mask while you're banging her. She won't connect you with the guy who spoke to her outside the school. She'll be so dizzy by the time we get through with her that she won't remember a thing."
Longinotti looked a little doubtful. But he couldn't very well question a direct order from Mike. He nodded and moved away. The rest of them drew to one side, and split up into small groups of two and three, so it wouldn't seem as though a gang had congregated.
Mike knew that the operation had to be pulled off with real finesse. There was a cop in front of the exit here, and plenty of teachers would come running in a hurry if a girl let out a cry of rape. So if they bungled it even in the slightest, they could be in very hot water very fast. At the best, they'd lose their opportunity to pull off the rape. At worst, they'd get canned for attempted rape, and the judge would throw the book at them just on general principles, because they were juvies.
Mike watched tensely. The gong had sounded, now. Girls were coming out of the school, just a few of them at first, then a thickening stream as the classrooms disgorged their pent-up multitudes. Mike knew a lot of the girls who were coming out. He had banged plenty of them, had fooled around a little with plenty others. They were all waving at him, trying to get his attention. But he ignored them. He lounged against a lamppost in front of the arch, and kept his eyes intently focused on what was going on inside.
Longinotti was still waiting.
But now Longinotti was moving toward a group of girls that had just appeared. Four of them. They all looked young, and pretty in a kind of washy-wishy unfinished way. Kids. Third-termers who hadn't ripened yet.
Phil Longinotti was going to one of the four, drawing her aside.
Mike lifted an eyebrow. This one seemed a little different from the other three. She looked just as young, sure. Just as unripe. But the immaturity was strictly in her face, in her wide blue eyes. Below the neck, she was a woman all the way.
And quite a woman.
If this was Rickhardt's kid sister, then they were going to have themselves a real ball today. Because this girl was built. Her face said fourteen, but her body said eighteen, and a lush, voluptuous eighteen at that. High, round breasts peaked the front of her red sweater, and Mike didn't think there was any padding in there. Her waist tapered stunningly, then flared again in an explosion of female seductiveness at the hips. A fuzzy green skirt covered most of her legs, but he could see her calves, and they were trim, well-shaped calves. He was willing to bet that underneath the wrappings there was one hell of a dish.
His mouth watered at the thought that half an hour from now he'd be finding out.
Longinotti was still talking to her, handing out some kind of long, earnest spiel. The girl was listening, and nodding, and now she was walking out of the courtyard still talking to Longinotti. Mike grinned. What a crapartist that boy was! What a line of patter he could hand out when he had to!
Mike gestured to the other loungers, and they followed along, still keeping widely separated. The idea was for Longinotti to walk the girl down to the corner, and to turn her onto Bachelor Street, which was a quiet little run-down place where no cop was likely to go prowling. Meanwhile Dave Herst, who had driven his big old heap of a '47 Lincoln to school that day. would be coming around the block and casually parking right near them. The rest would strictly be a matter of timing.
Mike turned the corner and looked down the block. There they were, Longinotti and the kid, still talking. What the hell did Phil have to say to her that was so damned spell-binding, Mike wondered?
Well, he wouldn't have to keep up the spiel much longer Because here came Herst. The big maroon Continental was steaming up the block. It had been only a shell when Herst had bought it, a year or so back, but he had lovingly rebuilt it into a smoothly running machine that was practically good as new. It was his pride and joy. And it was a big bastard, too. which made it ideal for a kidnap car. It could seat seven comfortably, and by jamming it up they could get a dozen in there.
Herst had pulled up at the curb right near Longinotti and the chick. Mike looked into the car and saw that Herst was already wearing a handkerchief over his face.
"Okay, guys," Mike said. "Tie 'em on. The masked rapists are going to strike, right now."
They moved toward the couple on the corner The street was silent. Longinotti had maneuvered it so the girl had hex back to the six advancing kidnappers, and so she never had an inkling of what was going on until the moment when they surrounded her.
"Into the car, both of you," Mike ordered.
Herst opened the Lincoln's door. Pappas and Novik pretended to grab Longinotti, while the rest swooped down on the girl. Mike caught her arms, Burke got his hand over her mouth.
The whole operation took about three seconds flat. The bunch of them swept into the car, Longinotti a supposed prisoner in the front seat, the girl in the back seat. They kept her down on the floor, out of sight. Burke crouched down there with her, gagging her first with his hand, then with a wad of linen.
"Step on it, baby," Mike said, and Herst hit the accelerator.
It was only a six-block drive from the school to Novik's apartment, but the trip seemed to take a year and a half. The girl had been blindfolded en route, so she wouldn't be able to tell the police where the attack had taken place. The last thing Mike had seen before knotting the blindfold over her eyes was the look of piteous terror in them, that imploring look, that look of disbelief.
"Here we are," Herst announced.
"Pull up at the curb," Mike told him.
The car stopped. Mike took a long look in all directions.
"Okay," he said finally. "We get her out of here and into the side alley. Then up the back stairs and into the apartment. Everything fast fast fast, you get me?"
It went off like clockwork. The front door of the car opened, and Novik got out. He opened the back door, and Mike and Burke emerged with the girl half-hidden between them. Then, with Novik leading the way and everybody else crowding around to screen the girl, they crossed into the side alley of Novik's house, and through the cellar to the back stairs, and then up and into the apartment.
Novik locked the door. Mike let out an imperceptible sigh of relief. They had made it!
"You got some beer?" Mike asked. "Left over from last night?"
"Sure, man," Novik said.
"Well, break it out, man!" Mike crossed the room and dropped down on the couch. It was only about twelve hours since he had left this place. The room had the stale smell of sweat in it, and of cigarettes and beer, and the smell of sex. He closed his eyes and the image of himself whipping Joanie came back to him, Joanie lying naked on the floor, her bare buttocks quivering as his belt racked into the tender flesh again and again.
It felt so good to bring pain, Mike thought. To whip and to cut and to rape.
Especially to rape.
He was going to enjoy this.
He gestured at two of his henchmen. "Get her clothes off and let's get started. We don't have all day, for Christ's sake. There'll be a search order out for her in half an hour."
Burke and Pappas took care of the job of stripping her. The girl knew very well, by this time, what was in store for her, and she fought desperately, kicking and scratching and clawing, until Longinotti and Novik pinned her arms. Burke grabbed hold of her sweater and pulled it up, being careful not to scrape the blindfold off as he tugged the tight red sweater over her face.
Underneath, she was wearing a black bra with little red flowers sewn to the straps. Evidently the idea of baring her breasts filled her with real horror, because when Johhny Burke's hands slid along her shoulder blades to find the hasp of her bra, she writhed and twisted as though demons were invading her body, pounding down on the floor to keep him from opening the bra.
To no avail. His fingers found the hasp and sprung it, and the bra came loose. Burke pulled it away.
A gasp of pleasure came from eight throats at the sight of her breasts.
The thing about them was they looked so new. It was as though they had sprouted only last week. They were big, though not as big as Joanie's or Marge's, and they were high and round and close together. The nipples were small and very pale pink in color.
The girl continued to writhe on the floor, but all she achieved was making her breasts bounce around prettily. There was a tremendous firmness to them. They didn't jiggle or quiver, big as they were; they moved together, like two rigid spheres.
"Now the skirt," Mike ordered hoarsely.
The girl fought like a wildcat, but it was just a waste of energy Inch by inch her clothes were stripped away. Off came the fuzzy green skirt, and off came the half-slip she wore under it. Now her legs were exposed, and they were good legs, well shaped, firm at the thighs, tapering nicely toward thin ankles. Only a pair of gauzy green panties hid the Rickhardt girl's nakedness now.
Mike's mouth was watering "The panties," he croaked.
Burke started to reach for them. Then Mike changed his mind.
"No," he said. "I'll take them off myself. You guys hold her."
The girl was spread-eagled on the floor, one man holding each of her limbs. Mike approached her and knelt between her legs, and looked at her, at the supple contours of her thighs, at the rich promise of her loins, at the high, peaked globes of her breasts.
Then he took his knife from his pocket. A couple of the guys threw him puzzled looks, but he ignored them. He pushed the button and the blade flicked into sight.
He laid the cold steel against the girl's thigh, flat. She shivered and tried to writhe away from the coldness. She probably didn't know it was a knife against her. Mike smiled and moved the blade slowly up, up into her groin, and slid it under her panties to where her legs were joined to her body.
He angled the knife so the cutting edge faced upward.
Then, with a quick whicking gesture, he slashed her panties open. It was done with a surgeon's precision. The green rayon parted up the middle, and Mike flipped the flaps of cut cloth off to the side and pulled the panties out from under her, and she was naked.
His eyes gleamed. He put the knife away and reached out to touch her body. His hand rested for a moment on the flat of her belly. Then it moved to the left a couple of inches, and he felt the hard mass of her hipbone just under the soft flesh, and then he moved downward, into the auburn wonder of her.
She shuddered at his touch. She was lying on her back, completely rigid, her body shivering with fright. She was petrified.
Mike looked her body over, up and down.
Then he reached up and yanked the blindfold off her. It was a risky thing to do, but he had to take the chance. He wanted to see her face. She wasn't really naked until her face was exposed, until he could see the play of emotions upon it. There was no fun in raping a girl if you couldn't watch her suffer, after all.
Her face was chalk-white. She wore an expression of fear and utter shock. The gag distorted her mouth and cheeks, blurring the expression a little, but it was perfectly obvious that she was scared out of her wits and close to blanking out. She wouldn't remember anything that had happened to her today, Mike told himself. The shock would take care of that. It would wipe her mind clean.
He felt his facemask to make sure it was still in place, just in case she did remember. Then he reached out and put both his hands on her breasts. She quivered as though stuck with a knife.
Mike squeezed. There was firm ripe meat in his hands, and his body throbbed with delight. He could hear the guys stirring restlessly all around him. They, too, were looking down at this naked chick, and they were eager for their turn, and they were fretting impatiently while Mike inspected her this way.
But they didn't have the guts to speak up and tell him to get a move on.
Let them stew, Mike thought.
He fondled her breasts, rubbing the tips of the nipples, trying to make them harden up. But she didn't respond. She was too terrified.
He drew his fingertips down her body, back down to her belly, then underneath to touch the warm fullness of her buttocks, then between her legs. As he touched her, he watched her eyes, saw the look of disbelief in them, the shock, the horror.
Your brother called me a half-pint Hilter, Mike thought. He insulted me. That's why you're here today, girlie. That's why you're going to lose your cherry in another half a minute, sis.
Mike's hand went to his pants. He drew the zipper down.
He said, "Here, take a look, girlie. You ever see one of these things before? Take a good look. You're going to see plenty before we let you out of here."
As he hovered over her, the girl's eyes involuntarily went to the swollen manhood of him, but only for a moment. She closed her eyes, tight shut, as though blotting out the vision of some unimaginable, indescribably loathsome nightmare horror.
"So don't look," Mike said. "It won't help you any, baby. Nothing can help you now."
He knelt again.
He put his weight on her.
His hand probed the valley of passion, searching for the entrance.
He came to it, and pressed against it. The girl groaned, behind her gag, a low rumbling sound of sheer panic. Mike moved his hips slightly. He didn't plan to be brutal with her, the way Dave Herst had been brutal with Marie in the washroom. No, it wasn't necessary to add brutality to the rest of what was happening. Mike would go nice and easy, nice and slow. He thrust and met resistance. The girl moaned.
So you really are a virgin, he said to himself. Well, isn't that nice! That makes me the lucky one who opens the prize package. I bet you weren't expecting this when you left for school today.
He pressed to her again, and watched her face. Her eyes were screwed tightly shut, and that was a pity, because he wanted to watch closely as it happened. Was she going to deny him that little pleasure?
No.
He thrust again, this time more vigorously, and her eyes opened, and he looked into them, and saw the innocence there, the youth, the fourteen-year-oldness. He told himself that in this neighborhood a girl of fourteen-or maybe even fifteen-had no business being as green as this one was. Well, after today she'd be different.
He thrust.
Hard.
The barrier gave.
And he saw the look in her eyes, the look of glassy eyed horror as her brain registered the fact that something irreversible had been done. Her girlhood was gone and now, willy-nilly, she had been made into a woman. A man had broken her and was taking her and was with her, and moving, and she knew it, and for one long terrible moment her eyes displayed the dismay and shock that she was feeling, and then the tears welled up in them and she closed them again, tight, trying to close out the world and all the terrors and cruelty that it held.
Mike laughed.
He put his weight on her and leaned, and the questing sword of him found the warm still virgin depths of her, the heretofore inviolate cavern of her, and he moved gently, then moved again, and repeated the motion, and felt the pleasure beginning to tingle in him. Now that he had taken her, now that he had broken her, there was no need to prolong the act. Others were waiting their turn. They could have her now. With a casual burst of energy Mike stepped up his pace and came to his completion.
He held tight to her, lying between her thighs, and let her know for the first time in her life what it feels like to have a man discharging his lusts at her. Then he rose, his face flushed, his heart pounding, and zipped up his pants, and sauntered away.
He pointed to Novik. "It's your apartment," he said. "You get seconds."
Novik nodded. A moment later he was unzipped and on top of her. Mike watched for a moment, watched the thrusting and the jabbing, but he had little interest in what was going on, now. He went into the kitchen and got a can of beer from the icebox, and punctured it as lightheartedly as he had punctured Lou Rickhardt's kid sister, and then he sat down on the couch to sip his cold beer and watch the festivities.
Novik finished fast. Mike appointed Dave Herst to have the next turn, since Herst had driven the kidnap car. Herst took a long time with her, savoring every moment of it. Herst prided himself on his masculinity. He wasn't built to tackle virgins. The girl was only half-conscious when Herst was through with her, and there was a little pool of blood on the floor between her legs.
Then it was Longinotti's turn, because he had also taken a leading part in the kidnap. The others drew straws, and took their turns, and finally all eight of them had had the girl.
She was out cold. She lay like a discarded rag doll in the middle of the floor, limbs outspread. There was something pathetic about the sight of her bloodied nakedness, and nobody in the room was saying much, as though they were all wondering whether this time they had not gone too far.
All but Mike. He remembered the way Lou Rickhardt had spat insults at him. Insults to be avenged.
Vengeance had been done.
"Okay," Mike said. "Anybody interested in having a second round?" No answers.
"All right," he said. "Get some clothing back on her, and let's get her the hell out of here."
CHAPTER TEN
THEY DIDN'T BOTHER WITH HER UNDERWEAR. They pulled her sweater on over her bare breasts, breasts that were red and swollen from the many hands that had fondled them in the last half hour. They put her slip and skirt on over her violated loins. They tucked the sweater into the skirt, and propped her up between two of them, and took her out and downstairs to Dave Herst's car.
"Where do we take her?" Herst asked.
"Grant Park," Mike said. "We'll dump her in some bushes near the railroad tracks. Maybe they won't find her for a couple of hours."
Johnny Burke looked at the sky. It was dark already, winter night descending early, and there was a telltale crispness in it. "Jeez, Mike, it looks like it's gonna snow," he said. "If she gets caught in the snow while she's out cold-"
"She might just die of pneumonia," Mike said. "Wouldn't that be a real tragedy, now? She'd have a hard time giving clues about the rape if she was in the morgue, I guess. We'll take her to the park,"
Herst started the car. It coughed a couple of times, because of the cold, and then came to life. He swung it in a U-turn and headed east, through the dark, quiet afternoon streets, toward Lake Shore Drive.
The girl was in back, between Mike and Johnny Burke, and she was still away in dreamland, limp as soggy paper. Mike looked at her without a trace of sorrow. This was a rough world, and everybody had to look out for himself.
You had to get your kicks. The best kick of all came from stepping on other people. If you didn't do the stepping, you got stepped on. Mike preferred to be one of the steppers, not one of the stepped.
He didn't think what had happened today would really ruin the girl for life. He was smart enough to understand a little about psychology, to know that for a long time to come this girl was going to be afraid of sex, that she was going to be kind of leery of men in general.
What the hell, though. She was just a kid. By the time she was eighteen, she'd think of the whole episode as just a nightmare that hadn't really mattered. She'd start putting out like any healthy girl does, and she'd get married and her husband would bang her every night and she'd have half a dozen kids, and what would it matter then that when she was in third term high school she had been taken to a cold apartment and given a going-over by eight sexed-up teen-agers?
The car zoomed along, heading northward toward the Loop at fifty miles an hour. Mike glanced at the speedometer and said, "Slow it to 45, bozo. You want a cop to stop us and see her?"
Herst hit the brake momentarily. The car slowed to the speed limit. They were passing McCormick Place, now. The big exposition hall stood out sharply, a light gray against the darker gray of the sky. A sharp wind was blowing in off the lake, now. Whitecaps were rising off shore. It was an ugly time of day.
They rounded the bend and got off the highway near the Field Museum, and drove the car into a little inlet by the side of the road and parked it there. The area was deserted. The Museum had closed for the day, and there was nobody around, absolutely nobody. There was a lot of traffic on the highway, southbound out of the Loop, but nobody who whizzed by at forty miles an hour was likely to notice eight guys carrying an unconscious girl into the underbrush.
There was a little thicket by the railroad tracks. Civilization wasn't far off-you could look up and see the hotels of Michigan Avenue looming right up a couple of blocks away, the Essex and the Conrad Hilton and the Ascot and the others. And behind you were the museums and the highway and the gothic bulk of the railway station.
But right here, here there was nothing, except sooty snow and the bare trunks of trees, and low evergreen bushes that shielded the area from roving eyes. They put the girl down here, against a bank ft heaped-up snow.
Longinotti said, "She ain't dead, is she?"
Mike shook his head. He knelt and put his hands between her breasts, bare under the red sweater, and felt the slow thumping oi her heart.
"She's alive," Mike said. "Just conked out, that's all. Come on, let's get the hell out ol here."
They took the overpass back to the car. A few snowflakes came spiralling down out of the darkening sky. The wind off the lake had a cutting edge to it. They piled into the old Lincoln, and Herst spurted it out onto the highway, into the stream of homebound traffic. They headed southward, caught up in the stream, at a steady thirty-five miles an hour, down the drive.
Novik said, "What we gonna do tonight, Mike?"
Mike shrugged. "Haven't you had enough kicks for one day?"
Novik laughed. "I never get enough. You know that, Mike."
"Yeah," he said. "Yeah. Well, we could have another party, I guess."
"At my place?" Novik asked.
"Why not? You want us to have it out on the Midway, maybe?"
"Okay, okay," Novik said, a little sullenly. "My place. Okay."
Burke jabbed him in the ribs. "Hey, man, when's your aunt getting out of the hospital?"
"Maybe next week," Novik said.
"Jeez," Burke said. "I guess we gonna have a lot of parties at your place this week."
Novik didn't answer. He simply scowled. Herst hit the gas pedal and the car sped southward.
Lisa Rickhardt stirred.
Shivers of pain went shooting through her. She felt as though her body were on fire. As though someone had rammed broken glass into her. Yes. That was what it was like. Splinters of glass embedded in the tender tissues of her body.
A snowflake brushed her cheek. She came to a half-sitting position and opened her eyes. It was dark out. Night. There was the moon, a little sliver of brightness over the tops of the buildings.
Where am I, she wondered?
And she wondered, Why do I hurt so mack?
And she wondered, How did I get here?
It was night, and it was snowing. Strangely, she hardly felt cold, though she knew the temperature had to be below freezing. It had been snowing for several hours, and there was snow all over her. Her skirt was covered with snow, and her sweater was covered with it. The one place she felt really cold was her chest, because there the warmth of her body had melted the snow, and cold ice-water had seeped between the strands of wool to drip onto her bare breasts.
Her bare breasts?
What happened to my bra? she asked herself.
She slipped one hand under her sweater and found that she was naked underneath. Her hand encountered the smooth flesh of her bare breasts. Her breasts ached. The nipples felt raw and swollen. It was as though someone had been hitting her breasts, or squeezing them, squeezing them very hard.
Lisa struggled to remember what had happened to her. She lay quietly in the snow, searching her memory for some details of the afternoon. But it was all a blank, a void. She remembered going to school that day, and she remembered her classes, but then the gong had sounded, and she had left for the day, and....
And Blank. Zero.
Something must have happened, she knew. Because here she was, lying in the snow far from home, and her breasts ached and there was this fire between her legs, this feeling of utter agony down there. Her mind refused to function. Her thoughts moved slowly, tortuously, like snakes trying to swim in a sea of molasses.
The snow continued to drift down. She didn't mind. It was clean, and cool, and felt good as the beautiful little flakes kissed her cheeks. When she looked up at the moon, the moonbeams illuminated the falling snowflakes, and it was like seeing diamonds falling gently from the sky.
The pain between her legs troubled her. Gradually it occurred to her that she had better take a look. Maybe she had gotten her period, or something. It wasn't due for another two weeks, but sometimes things went wrong with it, she had heard.
She shook the snow from her skirt and raised it. She raised her slip.
That's funny, she thought. I'm not wearing any panties.
In her half-dazed condition, she did not stop to consider modesty, did not bother to worry about the fact that she was in the open. No one seemed to be around, and it was night-time anyway. So she lifted skirt and slip and looked down at her bare thighs and rounded young belly.
Moonlight glinted on her nakedness. Snowflakes landed on her bare flesh and melted.
I've been bleeding, she thought. I must have gotten my period early.
But something seemed wrong, even so. Never in the two years that she had been getting periods had it ever hurt like this. It was like fire in there. Whatever had happened this time, it was different from all the other times.
She put her hand to herself, gingerly, exploratively. She winced as her fingers came in contact with the bruised, outraged tissues. When she took her hand away, the fingers were lightly covered with blood.
What on Earth-?
And then she remembered.
The shock-induced amnesia rolled away, and it all came back to her in one numbing burst. Leaving the classroom, and coming downstairs and meeting that boy, the strange boy who said he was a friend of Lou's and could tell her who had beaten him up. And then the long, rambling conversation, the endless talk that didn't seem to make any sense, as they walked around the block.
Then hands grabbing her. Masked figures hustling her into a car, forcing her down out of sight on the floor of the car.
Taking her somewhere.
Where? She didn't know. She was blindfolded.
Into a musty-smelling basement, somewhere. Up flights of stairs. Into an apartment.
Down on the floor. A thin layer of worn-out carpet underneath her.
Hands on her, pulling off her sweater, her skirt, her slip. Currents of fear running wildly through her as she realized that she was going to be-to be Raped.
Her bra being unhooked. Her breasts bare. Cool air passing across her nipples.
Hands on her naked breasts. Squeezing them, hurting them. A gag in her mouth so she couldn't cry out, couldn't plead with them, couldn't beg them to spare her innocence, her virginity.
Then something cold against her thigh. What? A moment later she knew. A knife. Slicing through the fabric of her panties.
Panties gone.
Stark mother-naked on the floor with strange boys holding her. Pulling at her arms. Spreading her legs.
Then, suddenly, the blindfold yanked away. She didn't want to see, but she had to see. A boy kneeling between her spread legs. She couldn't see his face because of the mask, only his eyes, hard eyes, cold eyes, cruel eyes.
He was opening his clothes. Showing her Oh, God! No!
God wasn't watching today. There it was, bigger than she had ever imagined it was. She had seen it before, of course, on her brothers, but never when they were excited, and it looked altogether different, looked terrible and menacing and enormous.
Please don't let him do it to me. Please stop him. Please don't let him put that to me. Keep away from me. Please please please.
Please!
This wasn't the right season for miraculous deliverances. There would be none for Lisa Rickhardt. She felt dirty hands where no man's hands had ever been before, and then she felt something else, and there was sudden pressure, and pain shot through her entire body, hellish pain, the most intense pain she had ever experienced, and then he was pushing again, and her body went rigid, and she was afraid he would split her open, and now she was praying just to get it over with, to end the agony, and he was still pushing at her like a battering ram, and Lisa wondered why it had to be this way, why these boys had selected her out of all the hundreds of girls in the school. It wasn't fair, when there were so many who would give themselves gladly, to pick a girl who was trying to keep herself clean, who didn't want to be a whore like all the others.
Another thrust.
A sunburst of agony.
Then came the moment of bursting through, and the worst of the pain was gone, and what hurt now was the awareness of violation, of defilement. She closed her eyes and could feel him moving, could feel his body actually against her, and it was dirty and disgusting lo have him there, to know that there was an invader of her body.
Then he was moving very fast, and she could hear him grunting like a pig, and then she felt him shiver, and his body against her gave a sort of shudder, and then the most disgusting part of all happened, and Lisa could feel him soiling her with his pleasure.
And then the others had her. Lisa couldn't count them. Some were gentle with her, and some were rough, and one of them, maybe the third or fourth, was so large that she was certain he would rip her to shreds. And then the pain became too great to bear, and she felt a kind of calm stealing over her, and then unconsciousness.
Then the awareness of cold, and snow, and night in a strange place.
I've been raped, she thought, with returning clarity. A whole gang of boys raped me. I've got to get help. A doctor. Police. I don't know. I can't stay here. I'll die out here in the snow. I'll freeze. I'm so cold already I don't even feel the cold. Where are my legs? Where are my toes?
"Help!" she cried.
It was only a feeble croak. No one heard her. A few hundred yards to the west, people in warm hotel rooms were getting ready for dinner. A hundred yards or so to the east, car after car of homebound husbands went whizzing by on the highway. But here there was no one.
No one at all.
"Help! Help! Help!"
Her cries were lost in the thickening snowfall. Slowly, Lisa struggled to her knees, then tried to rise. It wasn't far to the street. All she had to do was cross the park, and she'd be on Michigan Avenue.
She started to walk. But the pain was frightful. It was like a flaming sword thrust between her legs. She tried to walk bowlegged, but it was no use. Her frozen feet would not support her. After five steps she tumbled and fell, landing on her knees in the snow.
Can't stay here, she thought. Got to get out of the park....
She tried to crawl. On her knees, through the snow, a slow tortuous process. No good. She didn't have the strength for it. She crawled for perhaps twenty feet, and then had to pause.
I'll rest for a minute or two, she told herself. Just til I catch my breath.
She lay down in the snow, on her side. The snow was deep, now, the new snow over the old ice, and it was like a soft fleecy cotton blanket. There was still the burning at her legs. The snow will cool it, Lisa thought. She lifted her dress again. She scooped up a handful of new, feather-light snow.
She pressed the snow against her belly. Against her thighs. She opened her legs and put snow in between, up against the triangle of her womanhood. The snow was cool, the snow was good. It eased the terrible pounding she felt, the blazing pain. And the snow was clean. It had just fallen from heaven, hadn't it? Were there any germs in heaven? The snow would cleanse her of the foulness that had been pumped into her body.
She thrust the snow into herself. She heaped it up all around herself. Skirt up over her hips, she packed clean new snow over the middle of her body, over her thighs, her loins. Her buttocks rested on a mound of snow. The coolness was so good.
I ought to start crawling again, she thought.
But not yet. She had to rest some more. Her tired, violated body had been robbed of strength, and she had to regain, regain.
And the snow felt so clean, so sweet, so good.
It was like a blanket. If only it would cover her completely, and she could just close her eyes and rest, and forget today's nightmare, and wake up purified, wake up a virgin again....
The snow began to cover her. One thigh was almost entirely hidden by the snow, and the other was half out of sight. She wanted to take off all her clothes, and lie here naked in the snow, but she no longer had the strength even to disrobe.
It was so quiet here, now.
Lisa closed her eyes. The fire between her legs was dying down, now. The pain was ebbing. Everything was going to be all right, she knew. The worst was over. Now she simply had to rest.
Here in the snow.
The good snow, the clean snow.
The gentle snow.
It was covering her from head to foot. A fluffy white blanket, cool and sweet and clean and fresh. Lisa smiled.
She lay with her cheek against the snow and waited for it to spread a mantle over her entire body.
Seven miles to the south, Mike Leonidas pulled his car up in front of Artie Novik's place. The snow was coming down thick and fast now. He wondered if it would snow the car in or not. Well, there was a shovel in the trunk. He could always dig the car out later on tonight.
They got out of the car. The three of them-Mike, Marge, Joanie.
They went into the house. Mike put one arm around Marge, one arm around Joanie. Just one big happy family. His long arms snaked around each girl, so that with one hand he could squeeze Margie's breasts and with the other he could take a nip out of Joanie's boobs.
They went up the stairs two at a time.
"It's going to be a great party tonight," Mike said. "I'm in a terrific mood. Christ, I feel like singing, I'm so goddamn happy I"
CHAPTER ELEVEN
Mike was right. It was a great party. One of the things that made it great was the fact that Mike had bought three fifths of vodka on his way over, and that Dave Herst had contributed two gallon jugs of California sherry. You could do a lot with that combination. You could really pep a party up.
The usual way to mix it was fifty-fifty-half vodka, half sherry. Throw in some ice cubes and you've got one hell of a drink. But you can also mix it sixty-forty and get pretty much the same effect without using up the vodka so fast. That was how they mixed it tonight, about two-thirds sherry and one-third vodka in each glass, give or take a percentage point or two. No one was measuring exactly. The drinks went round, and spirits rose.
Outside, the snow kept falling.
Mike said, "Anybody have any idea how long it's supposed to snow?"
"Right through till morning," Phil Longinotti said. "I heard it on the radio. They're expecting ten inches tonight."
Mike laughed. "Got a lot of chicks here that are expecting ten inches tonight too. I guess they'll all be happy."
He peered out the window, and thought of the raped girl lying there in Grant Park. Was she still there? At least three inches of snow had fallen already. If she spent the night out there, she'd be completely covered by morning, what with the drifts and all. They wouldn't find her for days. Nobody bothers to clear snow away from a park, not until all the streets are clear, and that takes forever and a day. Given enough snow, say three or four more good storms this month, and she wouldn't turn up till April.
Mike didn't care. It was murder, he knew, but it wasn't the first time. The novelty was that he hadn't used his knife this time. And that it was a chick. He had three kills to his credit already, but they had been guys, all the same summer. Summer before last. A bunch of Polacks had moved into their territory and tried to raise hell, and Mike had cut them up pretty seriously, and during the course of the summer he killed three of them. He still had newspaper clippings filed away. Naturally, there hadn't been much of an investigation. The cops snooped around after each knifing, marked the case "Unsolved," and forgot about it.
The cops didn't give a damn when gang kids killed each other off. The way the cops looked at it, each one killed was one less nuisance for Cook County to worry about. It was only when the juvies started going after outsiders that the fuzz moved in and meant it.
Mike helped himself to another drink. It rolled down nicely, and left that warm, warm feeling where it hit bottom. He sat down on the couch.
One arm around Marge, one around Joanie.
It was really the greatest, this way. You caressed of them for a while, and then you caressed the other. And for a switch you caressed them both at the same time. It gave necking a new dimension, Mike told himself.
He looked around the room.
He saw Nolie moving out into the middle of the floor. Nolie was Jack Pappas' girl, a fiery little sexpot with bright red hair and the kind of temperament that is supposed to go with that color hair, but which usually doesn't.
Nolie was a torrid one, who didn't mind putting out for other guys when Pappas wasn't available. Pappas didn't seem to mind his chick being unfaithful, so they were very happy together.
Nolie didn't hold her booze very well. Let her get a couple of ounces of alcohol in her and she was sure to act up in some way or other.
She had more than a couple of ounces in her tonight.
And she was behaving right as expected. She sashayed out into the middle of the floor and started to snap her fingers, and boomed out in a voice that was astonishingly loud for a girl who was just about five feet no inches tall in shoes, "Grab you jocks, guys! Nolie's gonna do a strip routine for you!"
Somebody applauded. Mike looked at Pappas, but Pappas was just grinning broadly, as though to say that if Nolie felt like peeling, who was he to say no?
Mike started to snap his fingers, picking up the rhythm from Nolie. A moment later, as Mike nodded his head, every one else in the room was snapping in uni son too. The rhythm was harsh and insistent, a steady sensuous beat of snaps.
Nolie threw back her head and laughed. She rolled her eyes in a comic imitation of a night club stripper. Then she began to bump and grind.
"Hey, wait a minute," Dave Herst yelled. "If you're gonna strip, we gotta be able to see you! Get up on this, doll!"
There was a little wooden bench on which Novik's aunt kept a potted snakeplant. Herst put the snakeplant on the floor and pulled the bench out into the middle of the room.
Nolie stepped up on it. She tested it and found that it held her weight.
Then she started to bump again. The finger-snapping rhythm grew more frenzied. With a wild stare, Nolie slid her palms down her thighs, rubbing her hands along the front of her jeans.
"Go, chick, go!" Novik yelled.
"Peel 'em, babe!" Mike told her.
Nolie laughed. She put her hand to the nape of her neck, gathered up her red hair as though it were a mop, and bunched it high on the top of her neck. She threw her legs wide and struck a pose. Then she let the hair fall. She kicked off her loafers, one, two, off to the sides of the room. The snapping continued. She wiggled her pelvis in time.
Mike watched in fascination. Sweat was beading his face. He listened to Nolie singing, listened to the wordless chant of passion that was coming out of her mouth.
He snapped harder, faster. "Listen to the beat!" be yelled to the others. "Pick it up. now! Pick it up."
The beat became more intense. "Peel 'em!" Herst yelled. "Take it off, take it off!"
Everyone was watching, bug-eyed, even the girls. Nolie had a pro's skill in milking attention. She wasn't going to remove a thing until she had everybody's eyes riveted on her.
Then, with a wild shriek of pleasure, Nolie yanked her sweater out of her jeans and pulled it up over her head. She swung it once, let it fly. It landed on the reflector lamp in the corner and dropped to the floor.
She had a pink bra on underneath. She rocked back and forth on that little bench, pressed her arms together coyly, teasingly crossed them over her bra, and than joyfully unhooked the bra and tossed it after the sweater.
She had big breasts for such a short girl. A pair of bobbing boobies like that seemed out of proportion, almost, though no one was going to object. They were shiny with sweat. She gyrated wildly, and her breasts jumped around, bouncing and leaping, shaking and jiggling. She put her hands over them and cupped then in her tiny fingers, letting the rosy nipples peep through. She squeezed her breasts hard, and whooped with pleasure, as though a lover's hands held her bosom and not her own.
Then she took her hands away from her breasts and wiggled her hips frenziedly, making her breasts do a violent dance of their own.
"Boom!" she yelled, and threw one shoulder so far up it almost went out of joint. Her big round breasts flew up wildly on that side.
"Boom!" and the other shoulder got flipped.
"Boom!"
"Boom!"
"Boom!"
Sweat made her breasts gleam. The nipples were standing out, long and hard. Showing her boobs was obviously giving her a terrific charge.
"Take it off," someone yelled.
"Sure thing," Nolie answered back.
She let one hand drop to the fly of her jeans, man-style jeans, fly in front. She pulled the zipper down, then laughed and pulled it back up again, and down and up, jerking the zipper in the rhythm of the snapping fingers, and her eyes seemed to grow glassy and the smile left her face as sensual excitement took hold of her. Gleaming rivers of sweat ran out of her armpits and down her sides, and beadlets of shining perspiration tipped the heavy globes of her breasts, as she rocked back and forth on the bench.
Then she drew the zipper down again, and left it down. She opened the button.
She started to pull the tight jeans off.
It was a struggle getting them over the voluptuous flare of her hips, but she managed. Down they came, and down, and down, and then over her hips and to her knees, and to her ankles, and off.
Nothing but panties between her and complete nudity now.
She worked the waistband of the panties down, rolling it inch by teasing inch, displaying now the deep socket of her navel, then rolling it lower, oh so slowly, lower, lower still, so that now the red blaze of her femininity could be seen, and then the panties came off in one final rush, and little Nolie with the big breasts stood stark naked in front of them.
The finger-snapping grew furious.
Nolie bent backward, stripper-fashion, her legs far apart, as far as they could go on the little bench. She put her hands behind her head, digging the fingers into the thick red hair, and the posture made her breasts rise, the nipples pointing to the ceding. She ground her hips from side to side, the revealed nakedness of her pointing right out at the fascinated watchers, no Gstring to hide any of the details. She bumped her shoulders and up went her breasts, up and down, jiggling and leaping. She moaned ecstatically. Every eye was on her, focused now on the triangle of sensuality, now on the bright red points of her stiff-nippled breasts.
Faster and faster Nolie writhed, socking her hips back and forth, making her breasts bounce. The finger-snappers moved closer. Mike was standing right in front of her, and she practically hit him in the face with her boobs as she bumped and ground.
Nolie bent her knees and swivelled her hips. Then she swung around, showing everybody her buttocks, white and quivering, good meaty buttocks. She shimmied and the flesh of her backside jumped. She laughed and pounded herself ecstatically on the cheeks of her buttocks, and made them jump.
Her buttocks moved in alluring circles as she ground ferociously, hands clawing at the air now. Then Nolie swung around. Her eyes were misty, fogged with lust now. She had worked herself up into a real frenzy. She stood there, hips moving back and forth in a solitaire counterfeit of passion, hands on her breasts, squeezing them, kneading them, the nipples standing up, red and hard and tall between her fingers She swayed and started to lose her balance. Her firm legs stabbed at air. Her hips went through a wild gyration, and she toppled.
She fell from the bench, backward into the arms of Dave Herst, who was standing behind her. But Herst couldn't hold her. She wriggled free of him and threw herself on the floor.
She lay there on her back, writhing, spreading her legs, pounding her heels insistently on the floor, drumming a lust beat on the worn carpet.
"Come on," she shrilled. "Come on, you mother frying creeps! Who's gonna be first? Who'll make the scene? Come on! Come on!"
Mike stepped forward. He didn't care that this was Pappas' girl, or that his own two chicks were right next to him. He was caught up in the sex fever Nolie had generated, and there she was on the floor begging for it, and he had to have her.
Nobody stopped him.
He opened his pants and got down on the floor with her. He was ready, more than ready for action.
He looked over his shoulder and yelled, "Snap those fingers! Snap them! Keep it going!"
Nolie clawed at him. She was making hoarse sounds of want. She pulled him down on top of her.
Mike felt her small, lithe body beneath him. Felt the hard sweaty breasts jabbing into him. Felt the powerful thighs opening, the legs surrounding his body. Her heels dug into the backs of his knees. He thrust forward and took her. Nolie squealed in delight.
His mind amplified the finger-snapping to a kind of jungle drum, a Congo tune of passion. He hammered deep against Nolie, enjoying the warmth, the softness. The girl arched her back, made a U of herself, belly high hi the ah, buttocks completely free of the floor, and he thrust and drove and drove and thrust.
It didn't take long. Nolie had been right at a peak of ecstasy when he took her. All she had needed was a man to give her that little push into fulfillment, and Mike gave it to her.
She gasped and moaned and whooped. She sobbed and yelled and sang. She made it big, she made it the biggest ever, and Mike steamed right through it with her, taking her as far as he could go.
Then it was over for him, and he got up. He left a little shaky. He staggered away from her, drained by the intensity, the furious excitement of Nolie's need. He wiped sweat from his face.
Nolie hadn't had enough.
"Come on, you mother-fryers!" she wailed. "I'll take the whole bunch of you on! Who's next? Who the hell's gonna be next?"
Artie Novik lowered his body over Nolie's. Mike stood at the window and watched as Novik buried himself against the little pepper-pot.
The scene was turning into a regular orgy, now. Two of the girls had also stripped, and some of the others were starting to get with it. Mike looked around. There was Jessie, Artie Novik's Jessie, with her long, lean body already nude, and Jack Pappas was having her in an armchair. She sat above him, straddling him, and he was letting her have it, and she was jerking convulsively every time he thrust, and his hands were on her pale lean buttocks, squeezing, squeezing.
And there was Mae, Phil Longinotti's chick, a lush little brunette with the biggest boobs in the gang, and Mae was struggling out of her sweater now, showing off those two tremendous globes of flesh, and Phil was chasing her around the room, laughing and shouting, and as she ran her breasts bounced like jelly, and Phil caught up with her and threw her to the floor, and she rolled over and opened for him and he nailed her.
Mike looked around for his own chicks. At first he didn't see them at all. Marge's sweater was lying on the couch, where they had been sitting, but where was Marge, where was Joanie?
Then Mike saw them.
They had gone into the bedroom.
They were making it together.
Mike stood at the doorway, watching them in fascination. They were both naked, their clothes a tangled heap at the foot of the bed, and they were going at it hot and strong. Right now they were kissing each other's breasts. Their bodies rippled in emotional stress.
So they really went for this dyke stuff, Mike thought. The first time, he had had to order them to do it, but now they needed no hints at all.
They were really having themselves a time, too. Body intertwined with body, mouths full of breasts, knees jammed between thighs-it was a fantastic sight to watch, the pale blonde girl intermeshed with the tawny brunette, the 'irm buttocks thrusting out as they rolled over and over, now Marge's cheeks tautly exposed, now Joanie's, the lean supple bodies trembling with ecstasy.
Mike went over to them and looked down. They didn't seem to notice him.
He got his hands into the tangle, got one hand around one of Marge's breasts, the other on one of Joanie's. He squeezed, and the girls gasped in pleasure.
"You got some room for me in that mess?" he asked.
They giggled.
Four hands reached up to drag him down.
Eagerly they plucked away his clothing. Passionately they locked his body between theirs. If it had been good with just the two of them, it was colossal with three of them involved.
Mike took them. He was too drunk on vodka and wine and sex to know or care which one he was having. He ploughed them both indiscriminately. In turn each presented the harbor of her passions to him, he took her, and made it until he was grasped away by the other, and he went on, back and forth, shifting from one to the other without caring, giving both of them pleasure. The world was one big tunnel of love right now. All he had to do was thrust, and there were someone's passion-warmed loins ready to receive him.
The threesome writhed on the bed until all fervor left them. First it was Joanie to go, sliding unconscious into a little heap on the floor, lying there spread-legged in dreamland, laid and parlayed until she could take no more and had to slip into sleep. Then Mike continued to hammer away at Marge until oblivion came for both of them, not very much later.
Mike dozed. When he woke, he saw Marge curled up asleep next to him, and it was a pretty sight to see. He saw two ruby-tipped breasts rising and falling slowly, and he kissed each nipple, giving k a playful flick with the dp of his tongue.
He got up and walked back into the living room.
It was like a scene out of Babylon in there. Overturned chairs and empty botties were everywhere.
And naked bodies strewn everywhere.
Nolie lay next to the couch. Quite obviously she had had it, but good. She was out cold, but her face was still flushed and distorted, and her knees were up in the air as though even in unconsciousness she was eager to make herself available to anybody.
Mike stepped over her. He saw Jessie and Artie Novik curled up together, and not far away Jack Pappas by himself, and then Longinotti and his girl, Mae of the giant boobs, their bodies still interlocked even though passion had long since left them.
Naked. Everybody naked.
Clothing was scattered in every part of the room. It was going to be a real picnic sorting things out. Mike looked around. The room smelled of sex. He surveyed it, feeling oddly detached. At his feet lay a girl named Sally who was making it these days with Johnny Burke. Mike had never seen her naked before. She had small, pale breasts and big thighs, a funny combination.
He picked up a pack of cigarettes and lit one. Puffing quietly, he walked to the window and looked out. The clock in the pawnshop window said it was ten minutes to five. The city slept.
The snow still fell. It was piled up high on the windowsill, piled high on the curve of the lampposts, piled deep in the streets. The parked cars were almost buried. Mike saw his own car, half buried in a mound of fluffy snow. He wasn't going to be able to get it out at all. Well, it wasn't much of a walk home, even in the snow He'd just leave the car where it was until things cleared up a little.
He thought briefly of a girl lying in Grant Park. If they hadn't found her yet, they weren't going to, not for a long, long while.
Mike smiled. He turned, and looked at the sleeping nude forms of his pals and their chicks. It was really something to cast your eyes around and see sixteen boobs, wasn't it? Big ones, small ones, pointy ones, round ones. Tonight everybody had really pulled out the stops. No qualms at all. A regular orgy.
Why not, Mike asked himself. What was life worth, if you didn't get your kicks?
He turned away again.
He watched the snow. The snow was so clean, he thought, so pretty. A damn shame it turned black so fast. But right now it was good to watch. Mike watched h, feeling calm and good inside, feeling on top of the world.
CHAPTER TWELVE
THERE WAS NO SCHOOL the next day. Fourteen inches of snow had fallen, and the city was pretty well paralyzed. Since it was Friday, anyway, there wasn't much sense in opening the schools. It was a lot simpler just to declare a long weekend while Chicago dug out from under.
Mike had already declared a long weekend for himself. It was close to six in the morning by the time he got home, after a slow trudge through the deep, powdery snow. He headed straight for the sack, and the next thing he knew it was the middle of the afternoon.
Without getting out of bed, he switched on his transistor portable and got the news broadcast on WGN. They were talking about the snowstorm, and which highways were open and which were still being ploughed. Mike waited, and then heard what he wanted to hear: "The Mayor's office says that schools will be open as usual on Monday, despite today's closure, barring another snowstorm over the weekend."
So school was closed today. Good, good, Mike thought, He hadn't felt much like going anyway.
His mother was out of the house, probably visiting one of her Greek friends on the block. Mike put together some breakfast for himself, and then went downstairs to dial Artie Novik.
Novik sounded sleepy. "Yeah?"
"You up yet, man?" Mike asked.
"About five minutes," Novik said He yawned. "Anything going on?"
"Nothing. School's snowed out. I just heard it on the radio."
"Hey, great, man." Novik chuckled. "That was some blast we had last night, huh?"
"Yeah. Anybody still there?"
"Just Nolie and Pappas," Novik said. "They're both really stoned. That crazy Nolie. You know how many times she had it last night?"
"A dozen?" Mike guessed.
"Must have been two dozen," Novik said. "After you and Marge and Joanie went into the bedroom, everybody was taking turns with her. Some guys got four rounds, you know that? We were all so stoned we didn't know what we were doing, but we did it anyway." A pause. "Hey, you hear anything about the Rickhardt girl?"
"No," Mike said. "You?"
"I told you, I just got up. But you said you listened to the radio."
"They didn't say anything," Mike said. "With all this snow they maybe haven't found her yet."
"You think she's still out there?"
"Five to one says she is, man."
Novik was silent for a moment. Then he ;aid, "Hey, you know, they could fry us for that caper, Mike."
"First they got to find out who did it," Mike said. "Ten to one says they don't. You take it from me, man, the smart thing is, just forget the whole deal. Don't worry yourself any. It happened, and it's over, and put it right out of your mind."
"Yeah, Mike."
The operator asked for some more money. Mike didn't feel like putting it in. "See you, man," he said. He hung up.
So now the day was all his. The long weekend had begun, and the city was in the grip of snow.
He didn't feel like doing much of anything. The idea of seeing Marge or Joanie right now left him cold. He had had enough yesterday to hold him for a little while. He went back upstairs, and went to his room, and stretched out on his bed. He turned the radio on loud and let music blast through his skull.
He thought about last night, about all the naked broads, about the way he and Marge and Joanie had been making it. After a while he closed his eyes. He let himself drift into sleep with the radio still playing.
Half a mile away, at Marge's place, the same station was on. But Marge wasn't asleep. She was wide awake, and so was her guest.
Joanie.
Marge had brought Joanie back with her last night. It was too snowy out for Joanie to make it over to her own place, and Marge's was close to Novik's, so Joanie went there. Marge had a bedroom to herself, and she and Joanie shared the same bed for what was left of the night. They hadn't come home until seven-thirty in the morning. They had gone to sleep some time during the party, and when they woke Mike was gone, and those who were still there were all out cold.
Now the two girls had the apartment to themselves. There was no school today, but Marge's folks had gone to work, leaving the two girls alone.
Marge stretched like a big cat. She bad just awakened, a little past noon.
"Jesus," she said. "I feel like I laid a whole regiment last night."
"Just one guy," Joanie said with a laugh. "Just Mike, that's an."
"But a lot of times."
"Yeah," Joanie said. "He's some guy, ain't he?"
"He's the greatest," Marge said. Joanie chuckled. "I wonder how Nolie feels this morning. She did take on a regiment."
"I bet she feels sorry this morning," Marge said. "What a sexpot that one is!"
"Some girls just can't get enough."
"You don't have it as bad as Nolie does. Nobody has it that bad."
Marge stretched voluptuously. "I got it pretty bad, though. Come here."
"What for?"
"Come here," Marge said.
The older girl shrugged and walked over to her, and stood by the side of the bed. Marge looked up at her, straight into her eyes.
"I want you to tell me something," Marge said.
"And give it to me straight."
"Yeah?"
"Tell me this. Do you like it better making it with Mike or with me?"
"That's hard to say."
"Try."
"I don't know. It's a different deal. When we do it, it's more-personal, you know? But when I do it with Mike, I get his strength, his power. It's different. That's all I can say about it."
"If you had your choice about being on a desert island with Mike or with me, which would you want?" Marge asked.
Joanie shrugged. "That's a tough question. I couldn't really tell you."
"I know what I'd say," Marge smiled.
"What?"
"I'd rather have you," she said. "But don't tell Mike."
Joanie looked pleased. "Hey, you're a regular little dyke, aren't you?"
"I guess I'm becoming one."
"You ever make it with another chick before the time Mike made the two of us do it?"
"No," Marge said. "I thought about it, but I never did it. You?"
"The same. I thought, but I never did. I once watched two dykes making it in the locker room at school. I was kind of half disgusted and half interested. But I never got around to trying it"
Marge grinned. "The locker room. Yeah. Just a few days ago we were trying to murder each other in the locker room, yon remember?"
"It seems like a long time ago," Joanie said. She shrugged. "What the hell. I was jealous. I didn't know it was all going to work out so good. How could I have known, anyway?"
"Yeah," Marge said. "How could you have known? It's something you can't figure on."
Marge pushed back the covers. She was naked. Joanie was wearing one of Marge's bathrobes. Marge stood up, and slipped the bathrobe from Joanie's fullbodied figure. Now Joanie was naked too.
Marge stared at the brunette's high, ripe boobs. The two girls stood side by side, identical in height, almost identical in build, one girl fair, the other girl dark.
"You want to?" Marge asked.
"Sure," Joanie said.
"So do I."
They moved close together. Grinning, they touched nipples, just grazing, each pair of lust-hardened knobs barely touching the other. Then they moved closer. Marge's breasts came into contact with Joanie's. The two pairs of flesh globes began to flatten out against each other. Marge put her arms around Joanie, and slid her hands down to the dark-haired girl's firm smooth buttocks. Joanie embraced Marge the same way.
Slowly, like two dancers moving to some old melody, they began to weave from side to side. Marge's belly was flat against Joanie's, and as they rubbed each other there was a wonderful friction, a tickling sensation of pleasure. Belly to cool belly, breast to breast, then mouth to mouth as they kissed. Marge's soft lips parted to admit the questing warm tip of Joanie's tongue.
Body began to grind against body in the first eager thrustings of awakening passion. Smooth female flesh joined tight. There was no roughness, none of the harshness of masculinity, only softness, tenderness, fingers knowing exactly where a woman's most sensitive areas are to be found.
Then Marge broke away and stepped back, panting, her full breasts rising and falling in gathering excitement. She looked at Joanie, whose eyes already reflected the throbbing passions within her.
"I got an idea," Marge said. "A different way we can do it. Sort of get the best of both ways."
"Like how?"
"You wait here a sec. I'll show you."
Marge tiptoed out and went into the kitchen. She stood on a stool and reached high into one of the cupboards, her hand roaming around in the dust until she came upon the items she sought.
She brought them down, blew dust from them, held them under the tap to clean them.
Then she took them back into the bedroom and showed them to Joanie.
"Here," she said. "We can use these."
Joanie's eyes sparkled, and she smiled in glee as she looked at the two holiday candles that Marge had brought in.
"You know something?" Joanie asked. "You're a genius, Marge. A genius."
Marge handed Joanie one of the candles. The two girls sank down together on the bed, lying side by side. And moments later they were deep in the most passionate interlude of bliss either of them had ever known....
A few blocks away, Nolie Moran stirred and rolled over in her sleep, and then came awake.
She was naked on somebody's floor, she realized, and her throat felt funny and her tongue was cottony, and there was a pounding in the front of her brain and a peculiar feeling down below.
She looked around. There was Jack, fast asleep near her. He was naked too. Nolie thumbed her eyes. She was remembering, now. A wild strip tease, and then she had taken on the whole goddamn gang. And then she must have caved in and fallen asleep. She was still at Novik's place, it seemed. Well, her old man wouldn't give much of a damn that she hadn't come home, Nolie figured. He was probably too drunk to notice.
Artie Novik appeared in the living room doorway. He was dressed and looked wide awake.
"Hi, Nolie."
Nolie yawned. "Yeah. Hi."
"How do you feel?"
"Hung over. What the hell time is it?"
"Around one in the afternoon," Novik said. "There's no school today. It snowed all night."
Nolie got to her feet. She felt a little wobbly. She grinned and said, "That was some night last night, wasn't it, man?"
"You sure were red hot, Nolie."
"Yeah. I guess I had just about everybody, didn't I?"
"Just about."
"What time did things break up?"
Novik shook his head. "I don t know. I didn't wake up till a little while ago and there was nobody here but you two. I guess everybody left around five, six in the morning or so. I talked to Mike and he said he was the first to leave."
Nolie nodded. She started to look around for her clothes. Naked, she moved through the room, gathering the garments she had strewn around so gaily the night before. She stepped over the nude, sleeping form of Pappas several times.
She dressed quickly. "Guess HI be going," she said.
Novik pointed to Pappas. "What about him?"
"That's your problem," Nolie said cheerfully. "I don't own him, I just keep company with him. When he wakes up, toss him the hell out. See you, man."
"Yeah, Nolie."
Nolie went out and down into the street. The air was clear and cold. She liked the way it was, right after a snowstorm. There weren't many cars on the road, because the roads were still clogged, so the air was cleaner then it ever was any other time. It felt good to breathe.
Nolie picked her way through the snowbound streets. She lived four blocks away, sharing a two-room flat with her father. Or maybe he was her stepfather. Nolie didn't know, and didn't really care. She didn't see much of him. He had been a bartender for a long time, and had worked evenings. But he stole booze from his employer, and so they had canned him finally.
Now he drove a bus for the city, and worked days. He spent his evenings with his girl friends, usually. He had a lot of girl friends, haggard old Irish bitches in their fifties, and he went from one to the next to the next, sleeping with them and taking money from them.
Usually he didn't pay much attention to what Nolle did. She could come and go as she pleased. He was happiest when she kept out of his hair and didn't bother him.
She let herself into the apartment. A good hot shower, she figured, and then a meal. After all that exercise last night, she was ravenously hungry.
"So there you are, you little whore! You decided to come home, finally!"
Nolie stared. Her father came staggering out of his room. He looked horrible. He hadn't shaved, and his eyes were wild and bloodshot. He wore an ancient pair of pants and a tattered undershirt. He stank of sweat and cheap liquor. He stood there, half-reeling, and pointed an accusing finger at her.
"Stay out all night, will you? You lousy tramp! Letting all the boys lay you, I bet!"
Nolie stared contemptuously at him. "I thought you'd be at work, Dad."
"No work today!" he boomed. "Buses not running on account of the snow!" He came closer to her. "Filthy little slut. I raise you to be a clean girl and what are you? A pig! Stayed out all night, did you? How many of them had you? How many?"
"Look, Dad, you live your life and I'll live mine. You-"
"Shut your stinking trap!" he roared. His hand flicked out and caught her across the mouth. Nolie dropped back, her lips stinging with pain. Now she knew he was really drunk. The only times he worried about her morals was when he was totally potted. Any other time, he didn't care what she did with herself, who she slept with or how many times she did it. But let him make his load and suddenly he became worried about the condition of her immortal soul.
And at times like that he enjoyed slapping her around, too. Nolie backed away from him. The smartest thing now, she knew, was to clear out of here and wait for him to sober up. She could get a meal at the luncheonette on the corner, and then kill time till evening.
But he didn't give her the chance. He reached out and grabbed her by the arm as she started for the door. He tugged her toward him.
"Let go, Dad! You're-hurting me-"
"Little slut! Gonna teach you a lesson! You can't go giving your body away. You want to fry in hell? I got to teach you!"
He swung her around and hurled her into the other room, the one that served as his bedroom. Nolie slept on the couch in the outer room.
She went flying in and slammed against the wall. Moran followed her, closing the door behind him. There was no escape, now. Nolie trembled as she waited to see what he was going to do.
"About time somebody took you in hand," he was mumbling. "Girl seventeen years old should come home at night. Not go out getting laid like a tramp." He fumbled the belt out of his trousers. "Get your pants off, goddamn you. Gonna teach you a little discipline."
Nolie's eyes widened. "Dad-"
"Get 'em off!" The belt whicked through the air. "You want me to whip you in the face instead? Get those pants off, you hear me?"
He was crazy drunk, Nolie thought. But she had to soothe him in some way. If she tried to fight back, he might just whip her face to a pulp.
With shaking fingers she unzipped her jeans and pulled them down. She stood there facing her father wearing just her sweater and her panties. The belt swished back and forth through the air, menacingly, ominously.
"Now the panties," Moran ordered.
"God, Dad, I'm a grown woman. You can't-"
"Grown woman crap! I'm your father and you'll listen to me! Get 'em off, you hear me?"
His eyes were fixed with greedy fascination on the sheerness of her panties. Nolie moistened her dry lips and shook her head.
"This ain't right, Dad. You shouldn't be doing something like this."
"I want to see your butt, girl. I'm gonna whip you for being a tramp."
Nolie saw that there was no way out of it. She was strong but he was ten times stronger. She had seen him crumple beer cans as easily as though they were Dixie cups. She couldn't hope to fight him off.
She would have to let him have his way.
After a moment of hesitation, she peeled her panties partway down, and then all the way. She stepped out of them, exposing the supple youthful contours of her naked thighs and belly to her father's lustful gaze.
He grew red in the face, from excitement and not from embarrassment. Gesturing with the whip, he said, "Go lay down on the bed. On your belly."
Nolie shook her head. "Look, dad-"
"Lay down!" he bellowed at her. He came toward her and grabbed her by one arm, swinging her and throwing her toward the bed.
She landed face down in the rumpled, foul-smelling sheets. The twin while globes of her buttocks faced upward, exposed. She turned, looked over her shoulder, saw the belt upraised.
Then there was a line of fire across the tender, quivering flesh of her buttocks as the belt descended with searing impact.
And a second stripe of flame.
And a third.
"Stop it, Dad!" she screamed. "Stop it!"
He held her. One meaty arm kept her pinned to the bed while the other wielded the whip. Lash after lash after lash struck her buttocks, until Nolie was half wild with pain.
Then, suddenly, the whipping ended.
Nolie didn't move. She lay face down, sobbing, wondering if he had broken the skin, wondering if he had made her bleed. There was silence in the room. Nolie lifted her head, looked over her shoulder.
She stared in horror and disbelief.
Her father's grimy, sweat-gleaming face was a mask of bestial lust. His lips were slack, and he was drooling, and his eyes were fixed on the lush mounds of her bare buttocks. And he was opening his clothes.
"No, Dad! You out of your head or something? I'm your daughter!"
That didn't bother him. The whipping had worked him up to a frenzy of lust that was going to be satisfied regardless of who she was.
He fell on her.
Nolie felt disgust rising in her. Silently she fought him, struggling to keep her thighs together. But. drunk as he was, he was able to handle her. He wedged one thick arm at her legs, and pulled them apart. Nolie gasped in horror and shock. Tears of pain and degradation flooded her eyes as she felt his hands on her, and then felt something else, and she knew that her own father was taking her.
Still she tried to fight him away. But he had her now, and the thrusting vehemence of his gross body would not be denied.
And then, the fires of Nolie's own passionate nature took command. Despite herself, Nolie felt her body starting to tingle, and she began to move in rhythm with him. A prisoner in her own skull, Nolie Moran beat out a wild saturnalian chant of lust as she gave herself to the unnatural embrace with shameful restraint.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
MONDAY. Warm air had come drifting out of the south on Saturday morning, and the sun had appeared in the blue sky. and the snow had begun to melt. The streets were rivers of slush all day Sunday, and the sewers nearly flooded with the runoff, but by Monday the men with shovels had done their work, and the city was back to normal. The roads were open again, and the buses were running, and the schools were allowed to re-open.
Mike Leonidas was glad to get back to school. The long weekend had been a drag. He was itching for action, itching to take care of his second important project.
Itching to take care of that big shot shop teacher, Mr. Garvey.
At lunchtime Mike told them the deal. This was the day. Garvey was going to be gotten.
He watched their faces. He wanted to see if there was any sign of weakness, of chickening out. One weak link could send them all to jail for assault.
But they didn't question his authority He was the boss man, and hie word went. Anyway, what was a little thing like roughing up a teacher, compared with raping a girl and leaving her to die in the snow? After they had done the one, why draw back from doing the other as well?
They hatched their plans quietly in the cafeteria. Then, it was just a matter of waiting for the hours of the day to trickle away.
One o'clock.
Two.
Ten of three.
The dismissal bell rang. The day was over.
This time Mike and his gang did not race madly to be the first ones out, as they usually did. No, they took their time, like gentlemen, like scholars. There was no hurry today. They had to wait on Garvey, and teachers never left the school until it was empty of students.
So they got their notebooks together and left the classrooms with due deliberation. Slowly, Mike made his way down the stairs and through the ground floor hallway, and out the arch.
Pappas and Longinotti were already there. They grinned nervously at Mike as he came up.
"Hi," Pappas said.
Mike nodded. "Feet getting cold?" he asked. "Not me, Mike."
"What about you, Phil?"
"I'm with you all the way, man," Longinotti said. "One hundred three per cent."
"That's what I like to hear, man."
A few minutes later. Burke and Novik came sauntering up, and after them Dave Herst. This was the inner circle, the hard core. The five men who made up Mike Leonidas' court. , Other students, on their way home, peered curiously at the group of six, as if wondering who was in for trouble from them today. The six ignored all the stares of the passersby. They didn't give a damn what anybody else might think about them.
Mike smiled with inner confidence. This was going to be a big day, the crowning achievement of his career at George Morris, his ultimate challenge of those set in authority above him.
He had never raised a hand against a man teacher before. He had muttered curses, but he had never struck an open blow. A woman teacher, yes. That Miss Sommers, and the rape deal. But never a man teacher.
Part of the reason why Mike had never attacked a man teacher was that most of the men teachers simply let themselves be pushed around, rather than get into trouble. It hardly ever happened that any of the men teachers challenged Mike's authority, and none had ever done it with the rough straightforwardness Garvey had used.
The teachers were men with families, with kids. They knew the risks of pushing guys like Mike around. They were well aware that they might very well get a shiv in the belly if they acted tough. So they all tended to watch their steps. It was better to eat crow in front of a kid than to be carried out on a slab.
In other vocational schools in the city teachers occasionally got killed, sometimes one or two every year. In George Morris the teachers kept in line.
All but Garvey.
And Garvey, big as he was, was going to learn how to toe the line today.
The flow of homeward-bound students began to thin out after another couple of minutes. Mike looked at his watch.
It was five minutes after three.
Most of the teachers stayed around school until quarter after three or even later. There were two reasons for this. One was that the teachers needed some time to dear out their desks and get their belongings in order. But that was just a phony, a cover-up.
The real reason why the teachers hung around after the students had left was so they wouldn't have to ride home in the same buses and trains as their pupils. It was a smart idea. The teachers were afraid of getting into public transportation with their pupils, because they hadn't any authority over the pupils in the buses and trains, and were likely to get jostled around, or cursed at, or even roughed up a little.
Mike said to Pappas, "You stay here, by the arch, and keep your eyes open for Garvey."
"Sure, Mike."
"If anybody asks you what you're doing here, you say you're waiting around for your kid brother."
Pappas nodded. His brother was a freshman; he had already passed through the arch and was on his way home, but nobody needed to know that. It was a good excuse for Pappas to be loitering around the entrance to the school, something that was always cause for suspicion.
"You, Burke, you go across the street and sit down on somebody's front stoop," Mike said. "Just wait there rill you hear different. The rest of us will go down to the corner and play the juke in the candy store for a while.
Herst, you stand outside the candy store. Soon as you see Garvey, Pappas, you whistle to Burke, Burke gives the sign to Herst, the rest of us come out of the candy store and we follow him. If he don't show up in say fifteen minutes, I'll change the lookouts around. Everything clear?"
They all nodded.
"Okay," Mike said in satisfaction. "Don't slip up, Pappas."
"Don't worry about me, man."
"Yeah. See you later," Mike said.
With Novik and Longinotti, he headed for the corner candy store, leaving his three lookouts behind.
The candy store proprietor was not exactly overjoyed to see them. He was a little old Czech who had been running the store for thirty years, ever since George Morris Vocational High School had first opened its doors, and he could remember a time, back before the war, when the school was a wonderful place, where a boy could learn how to be a useful citizen, where he could be taught a trade that would help him to rise out of the slums.
Something had happened since the war, though. Something poisonous had gotten into the children, and you had to watch them every minute now, because you could never tell when they would take it into their heads to knife you and smash up your store, just to liven up the day.
So the little old Czech did not welcome the entrance of Mike and his two cohorts. Business was bad, but better to go bankrupt than to be beaten to death.
Mike ignored the proprietor. He went straight to the jukebox in the back of the candy store and dropped a nickel in the slot, and punched for a tune.
Raucous sounds filled the little dark store. Mike held the corners of the juke and moved his hips, and closed his eyes, and let himself get lost in the rhythm and the pulsing sensuality of the beat.
He was thinking of tonight. The celebration, after Garvey was taken care of.
They'd have another wild party like Thursday night, Mike figured. Another slambangerooney at Novik's place. Good old Novik and his sick aunt. This one would be wilder than Thursday, even. They'd pick up some booze and some wine and really go to town. He'd have all the chicks strip at once and do a can-can.
Mike smiled. He could just see them now, kicking their legs, their boobs bouncing merrily in the air, their fannies jiggling.
Longinotti said, "What you thinking about, Mike? Standing there grinning to yourself."
"Boobs, man. Boobs and fannies."
"You always got them on your mind, huh?"
"You tell me anything better to have on your mind?" Mike asked.
Longinotti laughed. "I can think of a better place to have 'em than on my mind."
"Yeah, man. Me too."
Mike fed another nickel into the juke, and daydreamed of making it with Marge and Joanie again, all three of them tangled up like worms. The minutes ticked away. Five minutes. Ten. Fifteen.
The time was going by slowly, much too slowly. The candy-store proprietor was looking uneasily at Mike, as though wanting to order him out of the store, but he was afraid to open his mouth. At least so far Mike and his buddies hadn't caused any trouble. Maybe they'd be good boys and go away without starting anything.
Mike fidgeted and looked at his watch. Then he glanced tensely at Novik.
"Artie, go down the block and ask Pappas what the hell's going on. It's getting late."
"Right."
Novik slipped out of the candy store. He returned a few minutes later.
"So?" Mike demanded impatiently.
Novik shrugged. "Pappas says most of the teachers are out of the building, but Garvey still hasn't shown up."
"Nuts," Mike said. "He gonna stay in there all night or something?"
"Maybe he knows we're layin' for him, Mike," Longinotti suggested. "You think so?"
"How in hell would he know?" Mike asked. "Not unless one of us tipped him, and who'd do that?" There was no answer. Mike said, "You two guys, go replace Herst and Burke at lookout and tell them they can come in here for a while. We'll wait. We'll wait if we have to wait all night for the louse to show."
They waited.
The minutes dragged by.
It was almost quarter to four before the signal finally came, relayed from Pappas to Novik to Longinotti. Garvey had just left the building.
"Let's go," Mike said.
He and Herst and Johnny Burke left the candy store. They didn't bother to pay for the sodas that they had ordered a few minutes before. The candy-store proprietor muttered something filthy after them, but he muttered it in Czech, and kept his voice too low for them to hear. He consoled himself by telling himself that he had gotten off pretty cheaply. They had done him out of seventy-five cents, but at least they hadn't wrecked the place or broken any glasses.
Outside, Mike and Herst and Burke headed back toward the school. It was getting dark, now, with night only half an hour or so away. A light sprinkle of snow was starting to come down-isolated flakes that didn't promise a heavy fall.
"There he is," Herst muttered.
Mike nodded. "Yeah. There's the son of a bitch now. About time."
Mr. Garvey had just come out of the school, and he was standing in front of it, talking to another teacher, one of the gym teachers, a big bald-headed ex-football player named Hansen.
"Let's stay here," Mike said.
Pappas and Novik lurked in the background up by the arch. The two teachers went jawing on and on. But at last the conversation broke up. Hansen headed off in the opposite direction, and Garvey, a bulky, imposing figure in his heavy winter overcoat, came down the block toward Mike. There was a little briefcase dangling from Garvey's hand, and it looked almost like a child's play briefcase in that big paw.
Mike and his two henchmen faded into the alleyway to let Garvey go past without noticing them. When the big teacher was half a block ahead, Mike gave a signal of two whistled hoots, and all six of them began to trail Garvey.
Garvey went down to the corner and halted at the bus stop. He stood there waiting, his overcoat pulled up around him to protect him from the slicing cold. It was a windy corner.
Mike said, "Stop here. Right where we are, so he can't see us."
"What do we do now?" Novik said. "Get on the same bus with him?"
"If we have to," Mike whispered. "I wouldn't want to do it that way. Maybe we'll be lucky and have two buses come along at once."
"Why don't we just jump him here?" Herst wanted to know. "There ain't no cops around."
"Shut up, stupid," Mike snorted contemptuously. "We gotta do this out of our neighborhood."
They waited. Mike felt the tension growing in him. But tonight, he promised himself, he'd really relax. He could picture it now, with one of Marge's big hard boobs in his mouth, and his hands squeezing Joanie's backside, and the two of them pressing up against him, panting and moaning and sobbing for it Yeah, man!
That was the life!
"Hey, look," Longinotti said. "Two buses at once. Just like you said, Mike."
"I guess this is our lucky day." Mike grinned. "Okay. We're gonna get that big bastard now. We're really gonna let him have it."
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
THE BUSES CAME nosing around the snowbanks and pulled up. The second of the two was by far the emptier one, and Garvey headed for that one.
"Okay," Mike snapped, the moment the teacher had boarded the bus. "Everybody on the front one, double quick."
The front bus was packed pretty tight. It had stopped only to let some passengers off; there was hardly room for standees. The six of them squeezed their way aboard anyway, pushing passengers out of their way.
"Hey," the driver said. "You kids. Get off and take the bus behind you. We're full."
"Shove it, man," Mike told him. "We're aboard and we're staying."
The driver couldn't do much to stop them In the general confusion, Herst, Mike, and Longinotti managed to slip past the driver without paying anything But the other three had to dump money in the till before the driver would start the bus.
They made their way through the tightly packed
"We gotta get to the back," Mike said. "We gotta watch to see where he gets off."
Getting to the back of the bus presented only minor problems. The passengers were largely middle-aged women who had been doing afternoon shopping, and at the sight of a solid wedge of six teen-age boys in black leather jackets they obligingly made room, even if there wasn't any room to be made.
Mike and his gang forged through the bus and took up lookout positions at the back window. The bus lurched ahead.
For the next fifteen minutes they moved along steadily, out of the shabby neighborhood where the school was located, and in a northwesterly direction into a quiet, attractive residential neighborhood with private homes that had lawns and trees out front.
Hardly anyone got off the second bus. But when they had been riding for twenty minutes, Johnny Burke said suddenly, "Hey, there he is! He just got off the bus! You see?"
"Ring the bell!" Mike commanded.
"Hold it, driver!" Longinotti roared. "We wanna get off!"
The driver had already shut his doors and was about to start the bus. But maybe he had heard some of the stories of the way teen-agers in black leather jackets had wrecked buses, ripping up the seats and smashing the windows, when the driver refused to let them off where they wanted to be let off. Or maybe he was just naturally timid.
He stopped the bus.
Mike and his bunch muscled their way through the thickly-packed standees to the rear door, and out of the bus.
It was past four o'clock, now, and the winter sky was getting dark. The snow was falling more steadily now. A thin covering of white had already blanketed the sidewalk and the hoods of the parked autos in the street.
Nobody seemed to be around. The neighborhood was completely deserted, everybody either still at work or else snug and warm indoors.
Up ahead, Garvey was walking rapidly through the gathering snow. They followed him, keeping at a distance. He didn't look back. They moved through the quiet neighborhood like a pack of hounds, staring blankly at the two-family homes and the pretty little private houses.
Mike said, "Well let him go half a block more. Then we catch up with him, drag him into an alley, and stomp him. Put your handkerchiefs on."
They donned their masks.
Giggling, Artie Novik said, "Jeez, I feel like a guy in a western movie."
"You may feel like a guy in a prison cell if he can identify you to the fuzz," Mike said sharply. "We ain't wearing these handkerchiefs for decoration, man."
They began to trot up the street after Garvey.
The snow on the ground helped to muffle their foot steps, and he didn't notice them until they were practically right on top of him.
They caught up with the teacher just outside a small red-brick house, and went into action, moving with the precision of a team that had had plenty of practice in mugging. As they charged, Garvey whirled.
"Hey, what the hell," he boomed, and without hesitating he swung his briefcase around, coming within an ace of taking off Pappas' head. But Johnny Burke moved in at the same moment, chopping down with the side of his hand against Garvey's wrist, numbing it and forcing him to drop the briefcase.
A moment later Longinotti had dropkicked the briefcase halfway across the street. It split open, high in the air, dumping out a lot of papers that scattered gaily in the wind.
Garvey grunted, "What the hell-you filthy little hoods, I'll-"
Burke hit him high and Pappas hit him low. Garvey fought back, joining his hands and bringing them down like a club to smash into the back of Burke's neck. Johnny went reeling back. But the others swarmed in over the teacher. Even Mike, who usually hung back and let the underlings do the dirty work in these mass muggings, coming in himself only for the finishing touches, joined the fray. He wanted to land a few solid smacks himself, to pay Garvey back for grabbing him by the shoulder.
Garvey was a couple of inches bigger than the biggest of the gang kids, and he weighed two hundred pounds at least-a solid two hundred. He fought desperately and with skill, lashing out in all directions, smashing his fist into Novik's face and sending him away clutching a bloody snout, landing a sharp crack on the side of Dave Herst's face that almost knocked him down.
But, tough and strong as he was, Garvey couldn't hold off six assailants for very long.
Mike got behind him and nipped his knees behind Garvey's knees, unlocking the joints and throwing him off balance. Mike pushed forward; Longinotti pulled, and the others grabbed hold too.
Garvey went toppling heavily forward and skidded in the new snow.
His face, bumping along the concrete pavement, came up scraped and bloody. He started to rise, to get back into the fight.
"Stomp him!" Mike yelled shrilly. "Stomp the louse's guts out!"
He smashed his foot into Garvey's chest and heard a rib crack. Garvey groaned, rolled over, and tried to get up, but he couldn't make it. He remained, like a punchy prize-fighter, in a sort of half-crouch, and after a moment sank back into the snow. He didn't look so big now, when he was huddled on the ground and his face was all smeared with blood and dirt and snow.
For a moment there was nothing but kicking and stomping, as the six teen-age hoods crowded round, pushing each other out of the way to get at him and land a solid blow. Each punch was a punch against authority, against the world of grownups, against controls and regulations.
Mike loved it.
This moment, he thought, was the greatest, the absolute greatest. It was a lot better than the time they tried to rape Miss Sommers, because that time they only got her clothes ripped but now they were following through and doing whatever they wanted to the teacher, and nobody was stopping them A shadow fell over the group suddenly.
A hoarse voice cried, "Get the hell away from him, you stinking filth I"
Mike looked up. A tall figure stood at the entrance to the alley. The figure wore a navy blue pea-jacket, and his face was bandaged. Bruises showed around the edges of the bandages.
A switchblade was open in his hand.
"Rickhardt!" Mike Leonidas exclaimed in surprise. "What the crap are you doing here?"
"I live here," Rickhardt said evenly. "Get the hell away from him, will you?"
He knelt by the fallen Garvey. "Dan, have they hurt you?"
"Just messed my hair up a little, kid," Garvey said through swelling lipj. "Get back in the house, kid. And put the knife away. You know what could happen to you if they find you toting that knife."
Rickhardt shook his head. He looked pretty pale, and there were dark rings around his eyes, and the signs of the beating he had received last week were evident all over him.
He rose and said, "You guys weren't satisfied beating me up, were you? You had to go after my brother. And you're probably the bastards who sent my sister to the hospital with pneumonia, too."
So they had found the girl in time, Mike thought. But he brushed that thought aside. "Brother?" he repeated incredulously. Suddenly he was stunned by this whole caper. "You-Garvey's brother? You ain't got the same name, even!"
"We're half-brothers," Rickhardt said. "We had the same mother."
Mike blinked. He had never really thought of teachers as having brothers. Teachers didn't seem like human beings, in Mike's way of thinking. The were just some sort of monster put on earth to bother and bedevil him.
Rickhardt gestured with the blade. "You think you're hot stuff, eh, Leonidas? Six of you ganging up on me, or on my brother here. And a bunch of guys jumping one little girl who never harmed anybody in her life. Well, how about a man-to-man stand, you and me? Right here and now, Leonidas."
From his place on the ground, Garvey said, "Don't do it, Lou. Don't get yourself mixed up in that lousy stuff again. Put the knife away. Don't meet these animals on their own level."
"Who you callin' an animal?" Mike snapped. The snow was getting in his hair now, bothering him. His five cohorts had backed up and were watching the little scene with quiet interest.
"Shut up," Rickhardt told him. He turned to his older brother. "And you keep out of this, Dan. I'm going to show this monkey where he really belongs."
"Who you callin' a monkey?" Mike roared.
"You," Rickhardt said calmly. "And you're a yellow chicken besides, Leonidas. You only fight with your gang behind you, you little yellow halfpint."
Mike reached into his pocket and came out with his shiv. He clicked the blade into place.
"I'm gonna cut those words outa your lousy hide, Rickhardt."
"Is it a stand, then? You and me, Leonidas?"
"Go ahead, Mike," Johnny Burke urged softly from behind. "Cut the loudmouth down."
"Yeah, Slash him, man," Dave Herst said.
Mike scowled. He didn't have any choice. It was going to have to be a hand-to-hand stand. Otherwise he'd look chicken in front of his own men.
He started to edge forward.
Garvey husked, "Don't do it, Lou. Don't get mixed up in a knife fight."
Rickhardt shook his head. "You leave this to me, Dan. I'll have to do it my own way."
He gripped the knife tight and stepped forward to confront Mike.
They circled each other in the snow, the tall, rangy man and the short, wiry one. The watchers gave them plenty of room. The fallen Garvey lay huddled against one wall, groaning now and then. Mike's five henchmen stood in a wide ring on the other side.
Mike gripped his knife loosely, switching it from hand to hand, cruising in for the mark as he had done so many times. He was the fastest man with a shiv in the whole city, they all told him. He could do miracles with the blade. Rickhardt had already felt the sting of Mike's knife. Now he would receive more than mocking little scratches, though.
Mike went into a quick weave. Rickhardt watched him coldly and closely. This was a war of nerves as well as of knives. Mike planned to demoralize his enemy with little nicking thrusts, leading up to the one savage climax of the attack.
Mike lunged and feinted and lunged blindingly upward, hoping to bring the knife up for a quick scratch along Rickhardt's knife arm.
But Rickhardt parried! He turned Mike's blade away halfway through its rise, and deftly brought his own knife down to draw a long, ragged scratch in the leather of Mike's jacket.
The tip of the blade dug into Mike's skin. It was a shallow wound, but an important one. Mike felt his own blood trickling along his skin. It was the first time in his life that he had failed to draw first blood in a knifefight.
He heard them muttering: "The big guy marked Mike! He cut the boss!"
Mike tightened his jaws and tried again. No more fancy stuff, he vowed. Rickhardt was a good man with a blade, and the contest was much more an equal one than Mike had ever dreamed it would be. He decided to go for a deep wound, maybe even a kill. If he killed, he would take care of Garvey too, and then they would beat it.
He swung the knife inward for a slice. Rickhardt side-stepped. The taller boy had uncanny reflexes, Mike was grudgingly coming to realize. Even though Rickhardt was stiff and sore from his beating, he moved like lightning. Mike swung again, missed, and felt the hot lance of pain in his shoulder.
Another hit!
And this time it was no scratch, no joke. Rickhardt had really stuck one into him.
Sweat began to trickle down Mike Leonidas' face, mingling with the melting snow. The water got in his eyes, annoying him. He began to get panicky He charged in wildly, leaving his guard wide open. All his skill deserted him. The blade-wizardry that had made him undisputed boss of George Morris High had totally fled.
Rickhardt laughed in his face and laid open the front of Mike's jacket with a diagonal blow. And then Rickhardt moved in on the offensive.
The first quick chop slid under Mike's guard and jabbed him in the armpit of his right arm, numbing him. He shifted the knife to his left hand and tried to parry, but his left hand wasn't nearly as quick as his right. Rickhardt drew blood again, on Mike's left shoulder. And again. And again.
Mike was dizzy, bewildered. His blood was flowing from half a dozen small cut. Rickhardt seemed to be all around him now. Mike heard Garvey's voice, distantly warning Rickhardt to lay off; Mike heard his own gang commenting in surprise, but they weren't making any attempt to interfere in the fight.
Rickhardt brought the knife in again, in a long, sweeping arc-but instead of striking with it, he feinted. Mike swerved, tried to parry, and Rickhardt's other arm smashed down on Mike's left wrist, knocking the knife from his grasp. A second later Rickhardt stuck his leg between Mike's, and the gang leader went sprawling on his butt in the snow.
Rickhardt stood over him, knife in hand. "Just stay down there, Leonidas, and listen to me. If you make a move I'll put this knife in your throat."
Mike didn't move. He didn't say anything. His breathing was loud and harsh.
In a quiet voice Rickhardt said, "I went to Havemeyer Vocational, Leonidas, and I was a pretty big man around there. I just about ran the place. And anybody who wanted to argue with me had to argue with my knife. Well, they caught up with me finally, and they took me away, and they sent me to a place where they taught me how to be a decent human being. And then they sent me back, on probation, in my brother's care. They put me in your school. I just wanted to be left alone, Leonidas. Not to get mixed up in this filthy mess all over again. So I didn't make a move to defend myself when you beat me up last week. But then you raped my sister, and I ought to kill you for that. You beat up my brother. I couldn't sit back and be quiet with all that happening. You made me mad, you little punk. So I got my knife out and I came to show you your place. From now on, you leave me alone, you leave my whole family alone-or I'll cut your guts out, you hear me? Probation or no probation, I'll cut your guts out. Maybe they'll put me away again, but at least I'll have cleared the world of you."
Rickhardt looked around. "Any of you others want to take me on in a stand?" Nobody answered.
"Okay, then. Get out of here, all of you."
He clicked his blade shut. Then, lifting Garvey, he half-carried the big teacher across the street and into their house.
Mike did not move after the two of them were gone. He huddled on the ground, feeling pain from his cuts, and feeling a deeper pain.
"The dirty bastard," he muttered. "I'll show him! I'll fix them for doing this to me!"
"Maybe you better leave him alone, Mike," Johnny Burke said. "He looked like he meant business."
"I'll show him," Mike said stubbornly in a thin, bitter voice. "Nobody messes around with Mike Leonidas this way. Nobody makes a fool out of me."
He shivered with the cold, and with the warmth of his cuts. Glaring angrily across the street, he said to his henchmen, "Help me up."
Nobody made a move.
"Help me up!" Mike repeated, louder.
They began to walk away. Slowly, with their hands in their pockets.
"Hey! Come back here, you mother-fryers! Help me off the ground!"
"Help yourself up, Daddy-O," Artie Novik's voice came floating back at him.
Mike stared with widening eyes at the backs of his five buddies. And suddenly the full bitterness of his humiliation was clear to him, and he remembered how Danny Calderone had been left behind by his gang when Mike had overthrown him, more than two years ago.
"Come back," Mike shouted. "You lousy bastards!"
But they had turned and gone.
Mike shook his fists at them. And then he thought of Marge and Joanie, the two of them naked in his arms, their sweet boobs and pink buttocks, and how he would no longer rate that kind of deal, because he was nobody now, just another guy who had been whipped in a fight. They wouldn't even spit at him now. He was through.
Slowly, alone, Mike Leonidas picked himself up out of the snow, found his knife, and started to shuffle away. His cuts hurt blazingly. And he knew beyond any doubt that this was the end of the road for him, that today his power over George Morris High had been shattered forever.
